I really need to read more about the US Civil War. Its a topic from the 1800s which has escaped me notwithstanding the enormous amount of written material about it (as an aside I just read up on the Louisiana Purchase - pretty amazing stuff to think that Republican senators thought the expansion of the United States beyond the original colonies was an unconstitutional and illegal act, and an amazing story of partisan politics, accident and good fortune).
I understand the economic drivers behind the split between the north and the south, although I did not realise the trigger of industrial advancement was quite as pronounced as that. (I think you always get those tensions between urban and rural areas - just look at your contemporary US red/blue voting maps. We get the same thing here with a relatively recent rural conservative economic push for "royalties for regions").
I also knew that the division between north and south with the south pretty much as an impoverished occupied state existed for a long time after the conclusion of the war. I read somewhere that the next time Southern officers actually worked together with Northern officers was in the Spanish-American War in 1899 - what's that, a few decades later?
Setting aside, in so far as you can, the fundamental issue of slavery, my own States-rights and secessionist instincts have enormous sympathy for the Confederate states on the basis of cultural differences (which I understand mirror the rationale for Queen Victoria's and Prince Albert's tacit support for the South during the war. Must find out more about Tsarist Russia's planned intervention in the war, apparently driven by the increase in cotton prices). I read in Esquire magazine a long time ago an interview with University of Alabama student politicians about racial integration. One comment which stands out in my memory was the repeated, and apparently genuine assertion from a black student politician that a black guy can share in the traditions and heritage of the Southern gentleman. If there is any element of truth to that, I find that very appealing that a previously exclusive culture can reinvent itself as inclusive and decent. Which I think conforms to your observations about black people wearing the Southern Cross as belt buckles.
But, I also knew about the increase in nostalgia in the 1960s as a direct backlash to the civil rights movement, which you fairly describe in your post. So, the symbolism of the flag extends beyond rebellion and an assertion of states' rights to racism.
From what I know, I'm not sure you can parse the two symbolic elements. I was very offended to read that the flag was not lowered to half-mast (notwithstanding the difficulties of actually doing that since it is not on a pulley) after the recent church shootings, and I'm half a world away.
I can understand, kind of, the generalised states rights "fuck you" inherent in having the flag flying at the best of times. But not lowering it seemed like a big fuck you to the families of the people who had been killed.
I was thinking about what you said as I wrote this post, and I think I have reached a conclusion which takes into account your quite valid views on this. If the flag had been lowered to half mast, then I think that would have gone a long way to negating the impression that it flies as a symbol of white supremacy: that the Southern gentlemen of South Carolina, the heritage and culture of politeness and manners which I understand it to embody, pay their respects to the dead by half-lowering the flag. But, by leaving it flying at full mast, it says that it pays respect to no one, no matter what.
A flag is just a rag on a pole, and might not be much compared to the racial poverty in Compton or wherever else in the US where you correctly say race relations are masked by the veneer of manners and not much else, but a flag has something to say, and the people who control the flag can use it to send a message.
I didn't know that flag was called the Southern Cross flag. We incidentally have our own Southern Cross flag which started off as a resistance to gold prospecting licenses in New South Wales (or Victoria? can't remember) in the 1800s and which lead to a siege of a fortified encampment by British soldiers. It has since curiously been adopted by the Australian union movement as a symbol of resistance to pro-employer politics (along with Mao Zedong's "Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win" slogan - a weird mix). My mother's cousin, who was involved in Australian federal politics on the left, once suggested to me that the Southern Cross flag should replace the current Australian flag, and I think the look of horror on my face killed the conversation (you people forget, I think, that by Australian standards I am reasonably conservative).
