围绕邦联旗的辩论
邦联部队围绕在他们的旗帜（左）周围，联邦旗位于远景正中。(Image by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)
美国南北战争(Civil War)中南方邦联(Confederate)军使用的是一面带有蓝色嵌星十字叉的红颜色旗帜，它也被称为反叛旗、南十字架(Southern Cross)旗和战旗。
在南方败北的150多年后，这面旗帜仍然在美国引发争议。
争议何在？
邦联博物馆（Museum of the Confederacy）的历史学家约翰·科斯基（John Coski）说：“即使所有邦联旗都在1865年被永远收起，它仍会是引起争议的一个象征”。但是，“这面旗自从1865年以来，因其更多的用途而增添了更多的含义。”（）
科斯基说，战争结束后，邦联老兵的后裔在纪念仪式上使用这面战旗，并且将它作为“他们先辈的光荣象征”。
随着时间的推移，由于前邦联州推行严厉的种族隔离，南方形成了独特的文化和政治认同，这面旗帜开始成为一种更广泛意义上的南方文化的代表。
在1940年代和1950年代，这面旗成为反对声势日益浩大的黑人民权运动的种族隔离主义者普遍使用的旗帜。
在种族隔离被废除以后，这面旗继续是那些坚持广义解释州权的人的标志，州权是指联邦宪法确立的属于州政府而不是华盛顿联邦政府职责范畴的权力。
但是这面旗也被种族主义者和白人民族主义者采用。
反对公开展示邦联旗的美国人认为，即使从善意出发支持它的人是将其视为南方传统或州权的象征，但邦联旗的历史就是宣扬奴隶制、种族隔离和不平等。
现状如何？
2015年，一名佩戴邦联旗印章的枪手在南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿(Charleston, South Carolina)的一个黑人教堂中，引发了更加激烈的辩论。一个全国性运动很快随之出现，呼吁在公共场合淡化邦联标志，包括邦联旗。政界领袖承认，即使用邦联旗的本意不是要冒犯，但是许多公民都会这样认为。他们建议，可以通过其他方式来弘扬旗帜代表的更广义的传统。
例如，在南卡罗来纳州，时任州长尼基·黑利(Nikki Haley)下令不再在州议会大厦外悬挂邦联旗。她说：“我的希望是，通过移走一个分裂我们的象征，整个州可以和谐前进。” (黑利现出任美国驻联合国大使)。
与此同时，在弗吉尼亚州(Virginia)，亚历山大市议会(Alexandria City Council)投票将一条以邦联总统杰弗逊·戴维斯(Jefferson Davis)命名的地方公路改名。
但是，美国几个南方州继续在州徽中使用邦联图像。许多美国人也，以展示邦联战旗的方式表达被他们个人视为的有意义的含义。
The debate over the Confederate flag
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Known as the rebel flag, the Southern Cross and the battle flag, a star-studded blue cross over a red field was originally the flag used by the Confederate army of the South in the U.S. Civil War.
More than 150 years after the South surrendered, the flag remains a source of controversy in America.
Why is it controversial?
“If all Confederate flags had been furled once and for all in 1865, they would still be contentious symbols,” of the Museum of the Confederacy. But “the history of the flag since 1865 is marked by the accumulation of additional meanings based on additional uses.”
After the war, Coski says, descendants of Confederate veterans used the battle flag in memorials and as “a venerated symbol of their ancestors.”
But over time, the battle flag also came to represent Southern culture more generally as the former Confederate states introduced strict racial segregation and developed a distinct cultural and political identity.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the battle flag became popular as a banner of segregationists who opposed the growing African-American civil rights movement.
Once segregation was dismantled, the flag remained as a symbol of those who argued for a broad interpretation of states’ rights, the areas that the U.S. Constitution reserves as the responsibility of the state governments rather than the federal government in Washington.
But the flag has also been adopted by racists and white nationalists.
Americans who oppose public display of the Confederate flag argue it doesn’t matter if well-meaning flag supporters deem it a symbol of Southern heritage or states’ rights. Its history, they contend, honors slavery, segregation and inequality.
Where does it stand now?
The debate heightened in 2015 after a gunman who posted photographs of himself posing with the Confederate flag in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. A national movement soon emerged to de-emphasize Confederate imagery, including the flag, in public life. Political leaders acknowledged that even if the flag wasn’t intended to be offensive, many citizens viewed it that way. The broader heritage it represents, they suggested, could be promoted and honored through other means.
In South Carolina, for example, Governor Nikki Haley ordered the battle flag removed from outside the state Capitol building. “My hope is that by removing a symbol that divides us, we can move forward as a state in harmony,” Haley said at the time. (President Trump ).
Meanwhile, in Virginia, the Alexandria City Council that was named for Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Still, several Southern U.S. states continue to incorporate Confederate imagery in their state emblems, and many Americans by displaying the battle flag in support of whatever it personally means to them.