Racism In Flags Essay, Research Paper

Racism can be represented in many forms. Flags are on of them. Flags can be used torepresent something. Many flags mean different things such as freedom, democracy and respectfor something such as a country. However, some flags can been seen as something bad orsomething that they disprove of, but to another person it can be something they believe in. WhatI am talking about is racism and how it can be shown in flags.

The Confederate flag is a very controversial flag. Some people see it as a flag thatrepresents the United States? History. Other people do not like the flag because it reminds themof the time in the United States history where there was a lot of slavery, violence and hate. Theflag was used by the Confederacy when fighting the Yankees in the Civil War. The flag is stillused in some of the state flags of the USA. The states that use the confederate flag in their stateflag are Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, Texas, and Alabama. The flag is used in theArmy for ceremonies and for graduation. Some African American officers do not like to use theflag, and argue that it is stands for racism and hate. Other officers say that they use the flag justfor the tradition and to keep the history. To some the flag may seem to be just a plain piece ofhistory but to others it can be real painful just to look at because it may have caused some pain tothe person personally or to their family in the past. One reason why this flag, to some people,stands for racism is because there are some hate and racist groups that use the confederate flag.Some people just want to ban the confederate flag but other people say that would be goingagainst the first amendment in the United States, which is freedom of speech. Banning the flagmay not be bad but its the principal of keeping the flag to show that we can handle this flag byhaving the right to wave that flag but we can show that we don?t need to. I think that just becausewe can do something does not mean we should do it.

In World War II a man named Adolf Hitler introduced a flag that he used to represent agroup he made up called Nazis. The flag has a real famous symbol in the middle of it, the symbolis called a swastika, it looks like a cross (mabey he thought of it like a religion) and the ends of thecross were bent in a clockwise direction. The flag probably has the same impact it did then as itdoes today. When people see the swastika it almost every person will think of Nazis or the WorldWar II and the bad things that happen in the war. The Nazi flag is still used today by hate andracist groups. The swastika used to mean the sun and good luck and many different things toother religions. That shows how something can just change so easily from one meaning toanother. The flag now would never be viewed as good unless someone stood for what theswastika stands for. The flag has been shown to other countries as a bad symbol and somethingthey do not want in there country, so the following counties banned the Nazi flag, Germany,Israel, France, and Italy. That may have been a good idea to ban them but again we have theright of freedom of speech but that does not mean we should use that swastika for anything. Butthen again the swastika changed its meaning so fast mabey we can change it again to somethinggood.

The use of hate flags and symbols is still around but another problem is the creation ofnew flags and symbols. There are also flags that are racist but not many people are familiar withthem. There are flags out there people do not know what they stand for or represent. There isone flag with FAP written on it which is used by one of Germanys most violent racist groups.Since the swastika is was banned, the German Imperial War flag is now being used for asubstitute by some Nazis. The USA flag, shield of the Aryan Nations is now used by Swedishnazi terrorists. Two flags I really disprove of are the Movimento Sociale Italiano flag, used in Italy,and the Front National used in France. The reason I do not like these two impeticular flags morethan others is because both flags look like there countries flags with a flame with the countriescolors again in a flame inside the middle of the flag. So I think that it is bad because it looks likethe countries flags and I don?t like the idea of a flag that stands for racist views to look like a wholecounty?s flag. Maybe if we did not know what any flag meant or stood for in the first place we maythen we wouldn?t have such a big problem with racist flags.

Flags can be good or bad depending on your views. Personally I think that a racist flag isa bad flag, but that does not mean I think that the people who like those flags are bad, I just don?tagree with there views on racist flags. This shows that Flags do have meaning and weather it beracist, good, bad, religious, even flags of your country have meaning. I just hope that later mostflags will be representing mostly good and all the racist flags will have stopped.

Bibliography

EncyclopediaFunk Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. Color-Daily. P.351 (cross)

Internethttp://www.student.uit.no/~paalde/nazismexposed/Scripts/flags.htmlhttp://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/naz_ban.htmlhttp://www.dailyeyptian.com/spring97/050597/flags.html

324