Studer Community Institute

Viewpoint: Forget flags and come together as community

June 26, 2015
/ George Hawthorne
/ community-dashboard

Mayor Ashton Hayward has shown great courage and leadership by removing the Confederate flag from the City of Pensacola buildings. The County has also agreed to take down the Confederate flag at the Pensacola Bay Center and follow its own legislative resolution passed in the March. No need for protests, debates or any other divisive actions by supporters or detractors of the flag. Can we now begin to have substantive discussions about solutions to some of our racial division? Escambia County citizens should now take the opportunity to find collaboration and common ground to solve our socioeconomic disparities for lower-income people of all races. The most unfortunate aspect of issues like the Confederate Flag “controversy,” is that it evokes the passions of racial and class division that further exacerbates the status quo of racial division in Escambia County. Discussions about CSA flags adoption, causes the opposing sides to cling to their long-held beliefs and shakes the foundation of trust that is required to implement true collaboration for racial understanding needed to change the state of racism … that we suffer together. Instead of debating that almost every spending category for Escambia County is impacted by poverty and lack of economic opportunities which is affecting all citizens of all races, we are discussing Confederate flags, history, pride and culture. And Escambia’s poor fall further behind in economic development. Instead of adopting proactive initiatives and ordinances that bring together the races, we are debating perceptions stemming from the past. Charleston’s tragedy clearly demonstrates that SOME people cannot separate the CSA’s pride from the CSA’s prejudice, nor can one separate the CSA’s symbols from the CSA’s slavery. Our community needs to recognize the respective perceptions of the past and increase our collective understanding of how the legacy of the peculiar institution of the Confederacy is inextricably and is forever linked to the oppression of Black people. The “legacy of the Confederate” has negatively shaped politics, perspectives, people and community trust in Escambia and America - then and NOW. We need to recognize that the supporters and the detractors of the Confederate Flag feelings and perspectives are most probably conceived based upon the reality of, which side of the bull-whip their ancestors were on. After the tragic events in Charleston, we must acknowledge effects of the Confederate ideology and slavery were a morally monstrous destruction of human possibility — it has shaped perceptions about African-Americans to the world — poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know Black people through the lens of stereotyping. Today, the legacy of racism has helped damage the truly progressive human relations among black and white people in Escambia. Slavery was only the beginning of the destruction of our collective cultures, understandings, beliefs. Since the Civil War, the legacy of racism has greatly diminished the human possibility that we could have achieved through true collaboration between the races. Let’s begin to build the bridges of hope and collaboration between all segments and all people of Escambia County to implement solutions that help our community grow together as a “community of collaborators” and create a community of inclusion, tolerance and understanding. By George Hawthorne, CEO, Diversity Program Advisors, Inc.

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Viewpoint: Forget flags and come together as community

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