Slavery, then, cannot mandate the obliteration of Confederate symbols while not at the same time mandating the obliteration of the symbols of the USA as well. To do so would be just as foolish as what Boaz is now urging in Mississippi. Boaz and the flag-banning crowd whose bandwagon he has joined distort history and perform a civic disservice by following the path of tyrants who outlaw unapproved symbols. To be precise, the error in outlawing the display of Confederate, Irish, or American flags is that such an action serves only to give credibility to the notion that the past is a simple matter of good and evil. An examination of history, however, should dispel such a childish notion.
Human history is populated by human beings.
Human beings being human, they are sinful, fallible, and sometimes evil. Even if such a notion were not patently stupid, in other words, even if it were true that every Southern man, woman and child was a demon incarnate, occupied every waking hour with the torture and degradation of black slaves, the obliteration of Confederate symbols accomplishes nothing. Americans have a skewed view of slavery because of the accidental fact of the racial element. But indicators such as name, language, scarification, dress, and manners all distinguished the identity and social status of slaves from those of their masters. Africans could not base their ownership of other Africans on the distinction of race.