Despite never having historically represented the Confederacy as a country nor officially recognized as one of the national flags, it is commonly referred to as “the Confederate Flag” and has become a widely recognized symbol of the American South.
Students in Maple Valley, WA, Charleston, SC, Canyon County, ID, and elsewhere are finding that they can get in trouble for displaying the Confederate flag.
If you support the Tinker decision — and we do — then you have to support the right of these kids to wear or wave a Confederate flag.
It’s not clear that Tinker applies here. The situation dealt with in Tinker was one of students wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The plaintiffs sought to have their right to express an unpopular political position protected even on school grounds. The Confederate Flag, by contrast, is a symbol with much more fraught meaning. Many African-Americans consider its display a sign of intimidation akin to cross-burning. It is also clear that widespread use of the Confederate flag as a symbol of white southern identity really dates only to the Civil Rights era, when it was taken up as a means of showing support for segregation. I think the flag’s display (outside of some kind of Civil War history context) in a public school is inappropriate. Students of all colors have a right not to feel intimidated on school grounds.