Confederate flags fly worldwide, igniting social tensions and inflaming historic traumas
The United States isn’t the only country debating Confederate symbols.
The Confederate flag can be seen flying in Ireland, Germany, Brazil and beyond. Sometimes, the red-white-and-blue-crossed flag is seemingly displayed as kitsch, a kind of Americana.
Brazil’s ‘Festa Confederada.’ Organizers say the annual event celebrates their Southern American heritage, but some Black Brazilians disagree.
Jordan Brasher, CC BY-SA
Other times, its display conveys a political meaning more reflective of the flag’s origins in the slave-holding, Southern American republic.
Wherever the Confederacy crops up, controversy usually follows. My academic research as a cultural geographer traces how Confederate iconography gets stitched into the cultural fabric of places thousands of miles from the United States....