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Paper takes heat for flag criticism
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by Emily Bourne
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Since Peter Kalajian’s opinion column criticizing the display of the Confederate flag appeared in the Oct. 14 issue of The East Carolinian, a student newspaper at East Carolina University, Kalajian and his editor, Amanda Lingerfelt, have been the targets of a campaign aiming to have the university punish them for publishing the piece.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, James E. Hickmon, whose website, My Dixie Forever, features multiple images of the Confederate flag, has organized a petition asking that East Carolina University take disciplinary action against Kalajian and Lingerfelt. Hickmon says he has more than 250 signatures.
Lingerfelt said to her knowledge there are no plans for her or Kalajian to be punished in any way, however.
“I spoke with members of the Student Press Law Center and our university’s attorney and came to the general consensus that there was nothing they could really do or were prepared to do,” Lingerfelt said in an e-mail.
Lingerfelt said when she first published the column, she did expect some degree of negative response since many in her area display the Confederate flag, but she did not anticipate the level of controversy the column caused.
“I never expected anyone to be so offended that they would try and take action to discipline employees of our paper. I felt the column was a valid opinion and that it was well within Peter’s First Amendment right to express his opinion on the Confederate flag,” Lingerfelt said.
Most of the negative response to the column, Lingerfelt added, has come from outside East Carolina University. She said she has received about 30 letters to the editor complaining about the column, but only two were from East Carolina students.
Donald Downs, a UW political science professor, said Kalajian and Lingerfelt were completely within their First Amendment rights in publishing the article and East Carolina University would not be justified if it were to punish the students.
Downs also said Hickmon’s attempt to have the students disciplined for publishing the column, which they are legally free to do, was just “another tactic of the anti-freedom left the right has adopted.”
“It was absurd when the left did it, and it is absurd when the right does it,” Downs said.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Hickmon has said he never asked for the students to be censored. His request is that they be required to take a Civil War history class.
Downs said forcing the students to take a class would still be infringing on their rights, however.
“This guy should take a First Amendment class,” Downs said.
Amid all the criticism, Lingerfelt said she has received support from faculty in East Carolina’s communications department “who may or may not support Peter’s opinion, but support his right to express it” and from local journalists who agree with her decision to print the column.
Lingerfelt said although she had heard some discussion about the Confederate flag among students before the column was published, she never realized what a controversy it was in her area until now.
Lingerfelt did not express any negative feelings toward those who choose to display the “negative” flag. She said she was impressed by their devotion to their cause.
“After having listened to the complaints of those who take great pride in their Southern heritage, I realize that to them, this issue is a common controversy, and they work hard to promote a positive outlook on both their heritage and their flag,” Lingerfelt said. “I never knew there were so many people who dedicate their lives to this cause, and that impresses me.”
Anonymous (November 16, 2004 @ 11:24am):
Memories, and its emblems, of the Confederacy should not be offending to anyone. And for those who have taken the time to do the research, it isn't. There's a number of things which offend me. However, I don't try to have them removed. If I did, there would be thousands of streets attacked across this country. It's time Americans stop hating one another simply due to their heritage. Several "special interest" groups just will not accept the fact many of us are proud of our heritage and for what they stood for. Members of these "special interest" groups must not be proud of theirs; if they were, they wouldn't be trying to destroy ours.
Anonymous (November 17, 2004 @ 3:26am):
Kalajian and Lingerfelt are truly shameless in cloaking themselves in the First Amendment, even when people aren't trying to censor them, but are merely trying to educate them out of their patent ignorance about the American Civil War. All these petitioners were seeking was fair and equitable treatment after Kalajian attacked their ancestry. His article alleged they were "neo-nazis," "klansmen," and "racists" merely because they had descended from veterans of the Confederate armed forces and they were not ashamed of that fact.
The Confederate Flag "display" that Kalajian claims he was so offended by was witnessing a "Heritage not Hate" sticker on the back of a pick-up truck in downtown Greenville, North Carolina. After Kalajian insinuated the driver of the truck was a slack-jawed yokel and a redneck (because he drove a truck with a gun rack) Kalajian proceeded to "connect-the-dots" and articulate his not very well thought out rationale for why "Heritage not Hate" is really a thinly veiled disguise for a Southern neo-Confederate master plan to bring back the plantation lifestyle and gentrified landownership, complete with massahs, no running water, dirt roads, and no air conditioning...oh yeah, I'm sure there are some slaves in Kalajian's vision of the New "Old" South. Boy howdy, that's the kind of South I long for.
What Kalajian and his kind don't understand is, we like our South just the way it is. We like DisneyWorld, and the Atlanta Braves, the Titans (sometimes) and Tampa Bay. We like mild winters and hot as hell summers. We like having the highest concentration of PhDs in the country (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel-Hill), we like having the highest concentration of wealth (South Florida), we like having low unemployment, low taxes, lots of land to grow, and no unions. We don't have to plug our cars in at night so they start in the morning. We don't have to walk in tunnels to get from one building to another so we don't freeze our asses off. We can wear shorts in March. We can wear shorts in November. It doesn't snow here. If the South is sooooo bad, why are so many Northerners like Kalajian moving down here?
Kalajian is the real hate monger. If you're looking for the real racist in the woodpile, look no further. Lingerfelt did a clever spin job in her interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education. If Kalajian had chosen any other ancestral group other than descendents of Confederate veterans to write his hate speech article about, he would have been expelled from school, no doubt about it. The scary thing is, once all Confederate flags are gone, all the monuments are melted down, all the SCV and UDC meetings have been banned, these hate mongers, these thought police, these ancestor patrols will have to move on to another "politically incorrect" group. Will it be yours?
Anonymous (November 19, 2004 @ 9:33am):
"I never knew there were so many people who dedicate their lives to this cause, and that impresses me."
No sarcasm intentended, but where have you been hiding?
Just do a web search on, Confederate flag, Southern Movement and State Rights.
I have added my site for your review. The most of us are "NOT" racist, just Confederate American trying to get our side heard and save a little of what's left of Southern Heritage.
A proud son of Confederate warriors, none of which owned slaves,
Tommy Aaron
The Southern American.org
http://www.thesouthernamerican.org/
Anonymous (November 30, 2004 @ 11:25pm):
Those of us who are apologists for and defenders of our Confederate heritage were no little concerned when the article and the followups thereon about on of the Confederate symbols appeared in your paper, the Badger Herald.
I applaud the fact that your institution and the paper which serves it promotes the natural right to free speech which is reflected in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. One would hope that you view all of the amendments, particularly of the original Bill of Rights, to be of equal importance, especially the 2nd, 9th, and 10th amendments.
One does wish, however, that those who write for your paper, even those who write editorials, would write articles which contained a modicum of fact and a morsel of truth. Such was not the case in the article about Confederate symbols and the Confederacy itself.
Those of us who defend and promote Confederate heritage do so with the full knowledge that not every aspect of one's heritage and traditions, whatever they might be, is fully without shadow or flaw; however, we will not allow the Confederate States of America and the South in which it took root to be made the scapegoat for the sins of humankind; for it is we who defended the republic against the empire; it is we who defended the states as the true principals and understood the general government to be the mere agent thereof against the notion of a nationalist government; it is we who defended patriotism against rabid nationalism; our Confederate ancestors where the last Amercians who defended as soldiers the actual borders of their states, their churches, their homes and their families against an aggressor; in all wars since, Americans have been sent by the empire to fight and die on foreign soil for interests which remains, if one is balanced, questionable. We were for free trade. We limited the President to six years. We gave our President the line-item veto. We outlawed the slave trade in our Constitution. General Lee embraced Jews which General Grant ordered them out of his jurisdiction with his infamous Order #11. The first woman to ever be commissioned as an officer in any army was so commissioned by President Davis. President Davis adoped a black child who was removed with force from the Davis family, never to be seen by them again, although they sought him for years after the war. Lee freed his wife's slaves while Grant retained his slaves until the 13th amendment took effect in 1866. All Confederate units were integrated and soldiers regardless of race received the same pay. U.S. units would not integrate until the late 1940's.
Why do you not invite some of "us" to you campus to adddress and dialogue with your students if you are really about academic freedom and a free press? I would be glad to come at my own expense to address these issue.
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to voice my opinion on this forum.
With kind regards,
Robert M. Peters
Commander
Col. Samuel D. Russell Camp
Northwest Brigade
Louisiana Division
Army of Trans-Mississippi
Sons of Confederate Veterans
