FRANKLIN COUNTY in Virginia must be one of those places where ignorance is tolerated and treason and racism are considered "honorable" traits. Just look at the condition of the American flag displayed in the photo at the shop in Boone's Mill, Franklin County, VA, It is disgraceful, weather worn and should be disposed of honorably. No patriot would display the American flag like that, but those with treasonous attitudes and sympathies would. Imagine wearing a Japanese rising sun shirt at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pear Harbor or a nazi swastika shirt to Arlington National Cemetery. Still, the U.S. constitution protects freedom of expression so instead of banning the wearing of the traitors rag (confederate flag) shirts in schools there should be lessons in homes, in houses of worship, in the schools and community reminding all the traitorous confederacy was defeated, there is no honor in displaying or wearing the traitors rag. Most important is to remember not to respond to the ignorance, racism and treasonous attitude of those who do display and wear the traitors rag with hatred and / or violence, to do so makes one no better than they are. From the Washington Post.....
Va. school board member wanted to ban Confederate flag attire. Others disagreed.
Feb. 2, 2020 at 5:24 p.m. EST
“For black people, the flag says you’re not welcome. It means . . . lynching, it means you do not have rights,” Blue said. “It absolutely harms the learning environment and it needs to go.”
At first, Blue’s proposal deadlocked, 4 to 4. Later, seven members of the board voted to adopt a broader dress code that did not include a provision banning the Confederate garb. Blue cast the lone dissenting vote.
Blue, 60, said she attempted to prohibit the flag after hearing complaints from black students, parents and educators. They told her white teens show up to school nearly every day — in a district of about 6,800 students that is nearly 80 percent white — with the flag printed on T-shirts, hats, jackets and belt buckles.
Schools Superintendent Mark Church, who is white, said the ban is unnecessary because most students do not find the flag upsetting. In his eight years as superintendent, he said, the school has not witnessed a single fight related to Confederate gear, nor a single formal complaint about Confederate clothing.
“A little Rebel flag on a jacket?” Church said. “Our students don’t — they’re not outwardly bothered by it, it’s not a significant issue.”
He added that, in southern Virginia, the flag is part of everyday life, flown prominently on vehicles and raised on poles outside stores. It’s not “a hate thing,” Church said: “For our students, if they’re wearing it, it’s just apparel.”
The debate roiling Franklin County is playing out in school districts across the country, experts said, picking up pace alongside an equally contentious national reckoning over Confederate monuments. The number of schools forbidding Confederate items in their hallways — and the number of lawsuits challenging those bans — has risen steadily over the past decade or so, said Nora Pelizzari, spokeswoman for the National Coalition Against Censorship, a New York nonprofit organization that advocates for free speech.
“On both sides of the issue, people are shouting louder than they used to,” Pelizzari said. “Maybe it’s politics, but I think it’s also social media: You know someone will have your back.”
Some school districts have already opted to bar the gear. Montgomery County schools in southwest Virginia voted to ban Confederate symbols from student clothing and vehicles in 2015; in Maryland, Carroll County schools adopted a similar policy two years ago.
Proponents of the ban in Franklin County insist that the flag is so offensive it prevents black students from learning. Still, black teens — conscious that they are in the minority — will often refrain from complaining to white administrators, according to parents and former students.
Malala Nadean Penn, a 2016 graduate of Franklin County High School who is black, said she felt upset every time she spotted a fellow student wearing the flag in the hallways. That happened at least once a day, said Penn, now 22.
But neither she nor any of her black friends ever considered going to the administration.
"I don’t feel that my voice would have been heard,” Penn said.
Opponents of Blue’s proposal maintain that — even if black students take silent offense to Confederate flags — banning the gear would violate the First Amendment. Donning Confederate clothing is a form of speech, foes of the proposed ban argue, and as such is protected.
Legal experts said both sides may have a point.
The Supreme Court long ago established that students in public schools benefit from robust First Amendment rights, said Catherine J. Ross, a George Washington University law professor and author of “Lessons in Censorship.” In a series of decisions, the court set the precedent that it is unconstitutional to forbid any kind of speech in schools, whether a Confederate flag, racist epithets or a swastika, Ross said.
A key ruling, Ross said, came in 1969 with Tinker v. Des Moines. In that case — centered on students who donned black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War, spurring administrators to suspend the students and prohibit the bands — the court judged that schools cannot forbid speech unless it is likely to generate “significant, immediate disruption,” Ross said.
Historically, the courts have defined “disruption” to include activities such as massive schoolwide fistfights or adults showing up to picket outside. By those criteria, Ross said, Franklin County does not seem legally ripe for a ban on Confederate gear.
“It can’t just be kids talking in the back of the classroom,” she said. “The courts have been very clear that hurt feelings — as much as we as a society may want to avoid that — do not justify censorship.”
Church said he would support a ban on Confederate gear if he felt convinced that the flags would cause schoolwide conflict. He has advocated for prohibitions on certain kinds of apparel in the past, he said: Once, he sided with a teacher who asked a student to remove contact lenses that “made it look like you were a cat.”
“Every time you look at the person you see cat eyes!” Church said. “Now that was a disruption.”
But Blue and her supporters can also point to precedent to make their argument, said Pelizzari of the National Coalition Against Censorship. A 2013 court ruling — Hardwick v. Heyward, delivered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, whose decisions affect Virginia — helped set a more expansive definition of what counts as significant disruption, Pelizzari said.
In that case, the court ruled that officials at a South Carolina high school and middle school did not violate the Constitution by banning the Confederate flag for fear its display would incite racial violence. In their decision, the judges referenced a proven “history of racial strife” at the schools and within the area, Pelizzari said.
“So if Penny [Blue] can gather data to show a recent history of racial incidents and of the flag being used in a provocative and disruptive way,” Pelizzari said, “the School Board could be on solid legal ground with this ban.”
Blue is contacting educators, parents and students to solicit examples of racially charged incidents, some tied to the Confederate flag, which she plans to present to the board.
“I plan to push forward on this until the end,” Blue said.
From the sidelines, George F. Washington is tracking her efforts with an approval tinged with sadness. Washington, who is black, worked as a top administrator at Franklin County High in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
He saw the Confederate flag every day, he said. Occasionally — maybe once every few months — black and white students would get into a verbal confrontation about the symbol. It was “like two players in an argument on the basketball court,” he said. Administrators almost always broke up the fight swiftly, sometimes by asking the white students to turn their shirts inside out.
“It was something we could handle,” said Washington, now 63 and retired. “I myself thought nothing of the flag, quite frankly.”
But the country, he said, has changed.
Washington pointed to the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, at which some participants waved Confederate flags. He mentioned the 2015 killings of nine African Americans in a venerable Charleston, S.C., church — and that the shooter, Dylann Roof, often posed for pictures with the flag.
“I’m seeing things now I thought had disappeared 20, 30 years before I was born,” Washington said. “I’m seeing things now that are just hatred.”
He supports Blue’s proposed ban. Back when he worked at the high school, he wouldn’t have.
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