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Monday, October 17, 2022

So you want to vote by mail – 5 essential reads

Voting at home by mail can be very convenient – and safe from concerns about COVID-19.

<a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/engineer-katherine-amoukhteh-looks-over-her-mail-in-ballot-news-photo/1052560438">Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images</a>

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<a href="https://theconversation.com/us/team#jeff-inglis">Jeff Inglis</a>, <a href="http://www.theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a>

As the midterm elections approach, much of life has returned to its <a href="https://time.com/6203058/covid-19-pandemic-return-to-normal-column/">busy post-COVID-19 normal</a>, even as <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1126621">the pandemic continues</a>. Being busy and wary of sharing space with large numbers of strangers are among the many reasons people might consider skipping Election Day.

In most states, you can skip Election Day and still vote, though. In many ways, the most convenient way to vote is by mail – even if many states require you to file a form or use a website to request a ballot. You can examine the choices of candidates and questions, and consider your choices, as you would if you were to vote on Election Day. When you are ready, you can mark your ballot in your own time and either mail it back or drop it off at a local ballot drop box or government office – as long as you do it before your state’s deadline.

Many people have questions about the integrity of this process, how they can be sure their vote will be counted accurately and how they can make sure it is even counted at all. Several scholars have written articles for The Conversation U.S. describing aspects of this system and explaining why it’s trustworthy and safe.

Ballots are specific to particular locations, including counties, municipalities and even sewer districts.

<a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GeorgiaElection/5df9347ff905475baea828cb10f64299/photo">AP Photo/Amy Beth Hanson</a>

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<h2>1. ‘Built-in safeguards’</h2>

<a href="https://charlottelhill.com/">Charlotte Hill</a>, a former local election official in San Francisco who now studies voting laws at the University of California, Berkeley, and political scientist <a href="http://jakegrumbach.com/">Jake Grumbach</a> from the University of Washington write about <a href="https://theconversation.com/6-ways-mail-in-ballots-are-protected-from-fraud-145666">six ways mailed ballots are protected from fraud</a>. Those include the facts that it’s very hard to make a fake ballot and a fake envelope and that eagle-eyed postal and municipal workers are always on the lookout for irregularities.

“The mail-in voting process has several built-in safeguards that together make it hard for one person to vote fraudulently and even more difficult to commit voter fraud on a scale capable of swinging election outcomes,” Hill and Grumbach write.

<h2>2. Lessons from Oregon</h2>

Since 1998, all elections in Oregon have been held by mail. Over that entire time, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OjANI8UAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Priscilla Southwell</a>, a professor emerita of political science at the University of Oregon, has watched how the system has worked and how people have reacted to it, and then she has analyzed its integrity.

“<a href="https://theconversation.com/mail-in-voting-lessons-from-oregon-the-state-with-the-longest-history-of-voting-by-mail-145155">Oregon’s experience shows that mail-in voting can be safe</a> and secure, providing accurate and reliable results the public can be confident in,” she writes.

Her conclusion reflects broad public support of the system: “Perhaps the strongest evidence that the system is equitable, fair, reliable and safe is that in two statewide surveys I have conducted over the years, a nearly identical percentage of Oregon Republicans and Democrats strongly support voting by mail, and the same is true of elected officials in the state.”

<h2>3. One caution</h2>

In an article crediting the convenience and integrity of voting by mail, political scientists <a href="https://www2.brockport.edu/live/profiles/1593-susan-orr">Susan Orr</a> of The College at Brockport, State University of New York, and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=adNsL9sAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">James Johnson</a> at the University of Rochester note one potential pitfall: Because it happens outside an official polling place, <a href="https://theconversation.com/voting-by-mail-is-convenient-but-not-always-secret-144716">the act of voting isn’t necessarily secret</a>.

A person voting by mail may be more susceptible to the influence of a relative, friend or employer, or may even be observed while marking their ballot.

“The voter marks the ballot outside the supervision of election monitors – often at home. It’s possible to do so in secret,” they explain. “But secrecy is no longer guaranteed, and for some it may actually be impossible.”

Drop boxes can be a helpful alternative to mailboxes for people who prefer not to buy postage or who are voting at the last minute.

<a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2020VoteByMailOregon/676bbd6939e64809be1cccf6d10d154e/photo">AP Photo/Don Ryan</a>

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<h2>4. Some ignore the evidence</h2>

There have been several lawsuits, especially in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, alleging that voting by mail is fraudulent or suspect. Rutgers University Newark law professor <a href="https://law.rutgers.edu/directory/view/venetis">Penny Venetis</a> has observed that some judges accept those claims:

“<a href="https://theconversation.com/mail-in-voting-does-not-cause-fraud-but-judges-are-buying-the-gops-argument-that-it-does-144157">Without providing any explanation or evidence to the contrary</a>, these decisions essentially erase scientific findings, cementing into law unsubstantiated and discredited claims linking voting by mail to fraud.”

<h2>5. Easy accountability</h2>

If you’ve decided to vote by mail, in most states you can keep tabs on your ballot and make sure it arrived safely at your local election office.

Law professor <a href="https://www.ali.org/members/member/429782/">Steven Mulroy</a> at the University of Memphis explained that many states have “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-track-your-mail-in-ballot-148503">a unified system [that] allows all voters to see</a> when their request for a ballot by mail was received, when the ballot was mailed to them and when the completed ballot was received back at the local election office.”

Check to see if your state is one, and you can rest assured that your ballot is on the way, that you’ve successfully mailed it back and that it has been accepted and counted.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archive.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191988/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" />

<a href="https://theconversation.com/us/team#jeff-inglis">Jeff Inglis</a>, Freelance Editor, <a href="http://www.theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a>

This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/so-you-want-to-vote-by-mail-5-essential-reads-191988">original article</a>.

Thursday, October 6, 2022

U.S. military to stop honoring Confederate history — finally

Published in The Emancipator (a joint venture between the Boston Globe and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research)

The Confederate States of America, the short-lived rogue collection of states addicted to slavery and its profits, will finally be put in its place, if the U.S. Department of Defense has anything to say about it. And a commission that has identified 1,111 items under military control — bases, buildings, streets, signs, and even a floor mat — most certainly does.

Findings from the Naming Commission that first met in March 2021 revealed a wide-ranging inventory of locations, items, and even software in military use around the globe. The goal is to remove all official commemorations of the Confederacy, “an act of rebellion. It was an act of treason,” according to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

The commission is chaired by retired Adm. Michelle Howard, the first Black woman to command a U.S. combat ship, the first Black woman to hold two-star and three-star admiral ranks, and the first Black person and the first woman to serve as vice chief of naval operations, the second-highest-ranking officer in the Navy. Most of the items are spread across 26 states. This includes seven states on the Union side and three that were not yet states at the time of the Civil War.

There are also items in Washington, D.C. — the Union’s capital city then and our country’s capital now. Still others are at U.S. military installations in Germany and Japan, which were not established until after World War II. These, of course, are not all of the monuments and memorials around the United States that commemorate the Confederate cause.

These symbols don’t exist as a result of accidents or coincidences. Nor were they part of efforts in the immediate wake of the war to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” as President Abraham Lincoln described it. They were created in the early years of the 20th century and remain echoes of a decades-long campaign to recast Confederate history. The real Big Lie, these efforts taught that the Confederacy was a noble “lost cause” attempt to maintain traditional American values, rather than a treasonous insurrection seeking to preserve slavery and the economic engine powered by the forced labor. The commission itself declared, “these names speak far more to the times, places and processes that created them than they do to any actual history of the Civil War, the Confederate insurrection, or our nation’s struggle over slavery and freedom.”

The military base names were among many — honoring both Union and Confederate figures — given to training camps assembled hastily in the run-up to both world wars. Spread around the nation for convenience and political reasons, their names were often picked by local officials who sought to honor their community’s history. Most of the camps, regardless of their namesakes, closed after the wars. But some remained and grew in size and importance over time.

Confederate symbols lurk in many corners

On the commission’s list are nine military bases named for Confederate generals. New names have already been proposed for these locations, subject to approval by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III. The recommendations include changing the name of Fort Bragg in North Carolina to Fort Liberty, to capture the American ideal.

The other proposed names honor figures in U.S. military history. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, for example, is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor for her efforts to save wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a member of the first all-Black U.S. Army unit to fight in World War I, was belatedly awarded the Medal of Honor for single-handedly resisting a German attack. Gen. Richard Cavazos was the first Hispanic American to become a four-star general in the Army.

One other military base, Fort Belvoir in Virginia, is named for a plantation where enslaved people were imprisoned and worked. But because it is not named for a specific Confederate figure or event, the commission has determined the fort is outside its purview. The commission has recommended Pentagon officials rename it under the standard process for renaming of military installations.

Seven vessels are listed. One is a Navy warship named for a Civil War battle won by the Confederate army. Five others are landing craft operated by the U.S. Army and named for Confederate military victories.

The remaining one is an oceanographic survey ship, USNS Maury, named for Matthew Maury, who served in the U.S. Navy starting in 1825. He mapped currents and prevailing winds in ways that dramatically increased the speed of sailing. For that work, he is known as the father of modern oceanography and naval meteorology. However, in 1861, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Navy and joined the Confederate navy.

The inventory also details 14 markers, monuments or statues; 53 paintings, plaques, or portraits; 742 signs, maps, marquees, or displays; and a single floor mat at the Fort Lee commissary. It also includes specific screens in military computer systems, logos on vehicles, and other administrative changes.

The commission recently added references to military units’ battle flags, used at formal events and special occasions to signify the units and their heritage. The flags are often decorated with ribbons for particular awards the unit has earned or identify battles the unit has fought. An August 2022 inventory update added the battle flags of 48 units, which bear a total of 491 streamers commemorating the participation of those units, or their historical predecessors, in battles as part of the Confederate army, though now they are part of the U.S. military.

A September 2022 update recognized that symbols within the insignia for several units, such as a saltire — the X-shaped cross that forms part of the Confederate battle flag — and even the color gray were in some cases meant to honor the Confederacy.

Academy buildings honor traitors

Several of the items on the list are at places where the nation’s top military leaders are trained. They raise questions about how to honor U.S. history without glorifying the treason and rebellion of the Confederacy because the locations and items are named for people who distinguished themselves during loyal service to the U.S. military. They are also the same people who resigned their U.S. commissions to serve in the Confederate military, complicating any formal recognition of their roles in American history.

Consider Maury Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, which is named for the naval oceanographer.

Take the official residence of the Naval Academy’s superintendent, and the street it is on, both named for Franklin Buchanan. He served as a U.S. Navy officer for 45 years, proposed the creation of the Naval Academy, and served as its first superintendent from 1845 to 1847. Like Maury, Buchanan resigned his U.S. commission in 1861 to join the Confederate navy.

The commission has recommended the Naval Academy rename both buildings and the street.

The commission’s inventory lists 10 items at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Two are roads named for Pierre Beauregard and William Hardee, academy graduates and longtime U.S. Army officers who both resigned to serve in the Confederate army. The commission has recommended that the roads be renamed.

Seven other items specifically honor 1829 academy graduate Robert E. Lee. They include a barracks, a child-care center, a group of homes, a mathematics award, and images and quotations by him. From 1852 to 1855, he was West Point’s superintendent. In 1861, he resigned from the U.S. Army, joined the Confederate army, and ultimately became the top general.

The commission has recommended that five items be renamed and that one portrait of Lee in his Confederate uniform be removed.

The 10th item on the commission’s West Point list is a public space on campus called Reconciliation Plaza, dedicated in 1961 to “commemorate the reconciliation between North and South.” The plaza includes several markers with engraved images of several Confederate figures, including Lee. Monuments there commemorate the Confederacy, including a depiction of “Confederate forces in insurrection against Fort Sumter, South Carolina,” the event that opened hostilities in the Civil War.

The commission recommended several changes to the plaza, including the removal of the images that depict Confederate figures, and removal or modification of those that commemorate the Confederacy.

The commission’s report also identifies other items at West Point that are not on its inventory list. One is a set of three plaques at the entrance to Bartlett Hall, the academy’s science center, which portrays several Confederate figures, including Lee. The commission has recommended the plaques be changed to remove their names and images.

Additionally, one of the three plaques shows a hooded figure labeled with the words “Ku Klux Klan.” The commission has determined that this monument, like Fort Belvoir’s name, is not connected directly enough to the Confederacy to be under the commission’s authority. But members have nevertheless recommended that the Department of Defense develop policies to handle this and any other such markers or commemorations that may be discovered.

Another item not on the commission’s inventory list is a monument called the Honor Plaza, which includes a quotation from Lee identifying him as Maj. Robert E. Lee, his rank when he served as West Point superintendent. But the quote is from a time when he was serving in the Confederate army. The commission has recommended it and its reference to Lee be removed.

However, the commission has determined that any images or references to Lee during his time as superintendent at West Point and that “do not conflate his Confederate service are historical artifacts and may remain in place.”

There are also plaques inside buildings that depict the names of Fitzhugh Lee and Joseph Wheeler, West Point graduates who served in the Confederacy. The commission has determined those markers commemorate their Confederate service but has left their disposition up to West Point officials.

The commission has not identified any items that honor the Confederacy or Confederate personnel at the other Defense Department academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Its review did not include the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, nor the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, which falls under the U.S. Department of Transportation.

What’s next?

The final section of the report recommended all other U.S. Defense Department assets and items — the ones that are not entire bases or housed at military academies — be renamed or have their Confederate-related insignia, markings, or references removed. There is an exception for items not in use, though the commission warned that if those items or insignia return to active use, they should first be altered to remove Confederate references.

The commission also noted that more items, locations, or other military property that honor the Confederacy are likely to come to light in the future. It recommended that those items also be renamed, removed, or modified.

In addition to Admiral Howard, other commission members include Brigadier Gen. Ty Seidule, a professor emeritus of history at West Point; Gen. Robert Neller, a former commandant of the Marine Corps; and Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, the first Black West Point graduate to command the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The commission also includes U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, whose district in Georgia contains Fort Gordon and Fort Benning, both named for Confederate generals. Scott notably voted in 2001 to remove the Confederate battle flag from Georgia’s state flag.

Jeff Inglis is a Boston-based editor, writer and data journalist who has covered politics, technology, science and culture in various parts of the U.S., as well as New Zealand and Antarctica.

Friday, July 1, 2022

Decades after Brown v. Board, US schools still struggle with segregation – 4 essential reads

Millicent Brown, left, was one of the first two Black students to integrate a South Carolina public school, in September 1963. AP Photo

Jeff Inglis, The Conversation

The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, handed down in 1954, was supposed to end racial segregation in the nation’s public schools. But that work remains undone, as evidenced by a U.S. Department of Justice collection showing dozens of active school-desegregation cases even in 2022.

To take a more in-depth look at the prevalence and nature of contemporary school segregation in the U.S., The Conversation sought scholars who could discuss the topic from various standpoints – from its legal history to its current status and modern-day efforts to make schools inclusive beyond racial identity. Here are four selections from our past coverage.

1. The Brown case wasn’t the beginning

The fight for full equity in schools first went to the courts in 1947, when a group of Black parents in South Carolina wanted their kids to be allowed to ride the bus to school, as the white students could. When the case finally went to federal court in 1951, writes equity scholar Roy Jones at Clemson University, a federal judge suggested more – a suit against school segregation itself.

“A month later, [civil rights lawyer Thurgood] Marshall brought a new case, Briggs v. Elliott, … arguing that school segregation in South Carolina was unconstitutional. This was the first lawsuit in the country to challenge school segregation as a violation of the U.S. Constitution,” Jones writes. “The Brown v. Board case eventually grew out of that South Carolina case.”

2. Still segregated

A group of young adults with varying skin tones socialize outside — Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district. AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

The Brown decision declared that public schools could not be segregated by race anymore, but the process took years and is still incomplete, writes Pedro Noguera, an educational sociologist at the University of Southern California.

“American society continues to grow more racially and ethnically diverse. But many of the nation’s public K-12 schools are not well integrated and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another,” he writes.

In fact, Noguera explains, “in 2018-2019, the most recent school year for which data is available, 42% of Black students attended majority-Black schools, and 56% of Hispanic students attended majority-Hispanic schools. Even more striking, 79% of white students in America went to majority-white schools during the same period.”

3. Economic segregation

Racial differences aren’t the only way U.S. schools are segregated. Education policy scholar Kari Dalane at the American University School of Public Affairs and a collaborator looked at how students are split up into classrooms within schools.

“We found that … economically disadvantaged students were increasingly likely to be concentrated in a subset of classrooms rather than spread out relatively evenly throughout the school,” Dalane writes.

That’s a problem because, as she explains, “more experienced teachers raise student test scores more than novice teachers, on average. However, novice teachers are frequently assigned to classrooms with more low-income students. Therefore, the more students are separated along lines of household income, the more likely poorer students are to fall behind academically.”

4. Children with disabilities

A teacher speaks with students who are raising their hands. — Learning support teachers such as Sabrina Werley in Pennsylvania are common, but schools’ services can vary widely. Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images

In the wake of the Brown decision came another effort – to include children with disabilities in the nation’s classrooms, rather than sending them to specialized schools focused on addressing their weaknesses.

A 1979 lawsuit ultimately asked the Supreme Court to interpret a 1975 law that said “children have the right to a ‘free appropriate public education’ in the ‘least restrictive environment’ possible in which their needs can be met,” explains education law scholar Charles Russo at the University of Dayton.

The lawsuit didn’t go well. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that a deaf student didn’t qualify for a sign-language interpreter because the student was doing well enough, even though an interpreter could have helped the student learn more and do better.

It took 35 years – until 2017 – for the Supreme Court to rule that schools owed students with disabilities an actually equal chance to make the most of their talents and promise. “Progress – and potential – were the new standards, not merely getting by,” Russo writes.

But it’s not clear how long it will take before every child has those opportunities.

Jeff Inglis, Freelance Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Teacher burnout hits record high – 5 essential reads

Schoolteachers are reporting high levels of burnout. AP Photo/David Goldman

Published in The Conversation

Teachers in grades K through 12 are more burned out than workers in any other industry, according to a new Gallup poll that finds 44% of K-12 employees report “always” or “very often” feeling burned out at work. That number climbs to 52% when looking just at teachers.

Increased work duties during the pandemic, students with mental health challenges and political debates over masks and mass shootings are among the reasons educators say they are under unprecedented stress – and staffing shortages increase the pressure.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Conversation has asked several scholars to explain their research on various aspects of teacher burnout. Here are selections from their work.

1. Teachers most enjoy working with students

A teacher holds up a calendar to her laptop screen during a Zoom call with her class. — Teachers experienced more positive emotions interacting with their students when schools closed during the pandemic. Barrie Fanton/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Nathan D. Jones from Boston University and Kristabel Stark from the University of Maryland interviewed teachers in early 2020 – both before the COVID-19 pandemic sparked school closings and lockdowns and after they began.

“Of all the things teachers do on the job, we found that teachers enjoy interacting with students the most – and that the positive feelings when working with students intensified once schools shifted to remote learning during the pandemic,” they wrote. As parents and communities rallied around teachers, they felt supported and encouraged to continue to support each child in their charge. But the researchers warned those feelings might be overcome by other responsibilities.

“As schools reopen, our research suggests that one way to keep teachers motivated and engaged is to ensure that they have time to build and maintain relationships with students. This is something we fear could become lost as school leaders are forced to focus on the health and safety aspects of operating schools as the pandemic continues.”

2. ‘Every day feels unsettled’

Sure enough, by the 2021-2022 school year, teachers were feeling stressed and burned out, as Laura Wangsness Willemsen and John W. Braun at Concordia University, St. Paul, and Elisheva L. Cohen at Indiana University found in their interviews with teachers and school administrators.

Lack of staff support was a major concern: “[P]ersistent staffing shortages are leading professionals to feel burned out and to worry about students missing learning opportunities,” they wrote. One assistant principal told the researchers, “Every day feels unsettled. I experience anxiety about how my day will unfold.”

3. It’s more than just individual

Australian education scholars Rebecca J. Collie at the University of New South Wales Sydney and Caroline F. Mansfield at University of Notre Dame Australia looked at sources of workplace stress among about 3,100 teachers at 225 Australian schools.

They found that school management was also a key factor in whether teachers felt stressed. “[S]ources of stress at work are not necessarily specific to the individual, but reflect a broader school climate as well,” they wrote. “So, teachers’ stress isn’t just an individual issue – some schools are more stressful places to work.”

4. Teachers look for other options

All this stress and uncertainty led to teachers’ rethinking their careers, according to research from Gema Zamarro, Andrew Camp and Josh McGee at the University of Arkansas, and Dillon Fuchsman at Saint Louis University.

“More than 40% of the teachers surveyed said they considered leaving or retiring, and over half of those said it was because of the pandemic,” they wrote. “In March 2020, 74% of teachers said they expected to work as a teacher until retirement, but the figure fell to 69% in March 2021. The proportion of teachers answering ‘I don’t know’ to this question increased by a similar amount, rising from 16% to 22%.”

An adult stands in the front of a classroom with young children at desks — Teachers across the U.S. have been under stress throughout the pandemic. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

5. The exodus may not be immediate

Changes in career plans for teachers are one line of research for Christopher Redding at the University of Florida, who along with Temple University’s Allison Gilmour, Boston University’s Elizabeth Bettini and Kansas State University’s Tuan D. Nguyen compared what teachers said about their plans to change professions with whether they actually did so.

“Based on our research, we think it unlikely that most teachers who say they plan to leave teaching as soon as possible will actually leave this school year,” they wrote. “However, if even one-third of teachers who say they’re leaving the profession do so, that would be significantly more than the 8% of teachers who leave in an average year.”

What it comes down to, they wrote, is that “[t]eachers are clearly sounding the alarm about stress, burnout, dissatisfaction with school and district leadership, and other working conditions – even if they do stay in their jobs.”

Jeff Inglis, Freelance Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Capitol Police prepare for a return of insurrectionists to Washington – 5 essential reads on the symbols they carried on Jan. 6

The U.S. Capitol Police are making security preparations for the planned rally. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Jeff Inglis, The Conversation

A rally in Washington, slated for Sept. 18, 2021, is being billed as an effort to support people who face criminal charges for their involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Many of the same groups who participated in January are expected to return to the nation’s capital for this demonstration. Capitol Police are reportedly preparing for violence and erecting protective fencing around the building.

The groups involved in January’s attack on the Capitol carried a variety of political and ideological flags and signs. The Conversation asked scholars to explain what they saw – including ancient Norse images and more recent flags from U.S. history – and what those symbols mean.

Here are five articles from The Conversation’s coverage, explaining what many of the symbols mean.

A man carries the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol. — A man carries the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, between portraits of senators who both opposed and supported slavery. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

1. The Confederate battle flag

Perhaps the most recognized symbol of white supremacy is the Confederate battle flag.

“Since its debut during the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag has been flown regularly by white insurrectionists and reactionaries fighting against rising tides of newly won Black political power,” writes Jordan Brasher at Columbus State University, who has studied how the Confederacy has been memorialized.

He notes that in one photo from inside the Capitol, the flag’s history came into sharp relief as the man carrying it was standing between “the portraits of two Civil War-era U.S. senators – one an ardent proponent of slavery and the other an abolitionist once beaten unconscious for his views on the Senate floor.”

Gadsden flags fly at a Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol. — Gadsden flags fly at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

2. The yellow Gadsden flag

Another flag with a racist history is the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. A symbol warning of self-defense, it was designed by slave owner and trader Christopher Gadsden when the American Revolution began, as Iowa State University graphic design scholar Paul Bruski writes.

“Because of its creator’s history and because it is commonly flown alongside ‘Trump 2020’ flags, the Confederate battle flag and other white-supremacist flags, some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate – or even racism,” he explains.

It has been adopted by the tea party movement and other Republican-leaning groups, but the flag still carries the legacy, and the name, of its creator.

U.S. Capitol storming, gallows, Trump supporters — A gallows symbolizing the lynching of Jews was among the hate symbols carried as crowds stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images

3. Powerful anti-Semitism

Another arm of white supremacy doesn’t target Blacks. Instead, it demonizes Jewish people. Plenty of anti-Semitic symbols were on display during the riot, as Jonathan D. Sarna explains.

Sarna is a Brandeis University scholar of American anti-Semitism and describes the ways that “[c]alls to exterminate Jews are common in far-right and white nationalist circles.” That included a gallows erected outside the Capitol, evoking a disturbing element of a 1978 novel depicting the takeover of Washington, along with mass lynchings and slaughtering of Jews.

A man wearing a horned hat and displaying Norse tattoos. — A man known as Jake Angeli, who is soon to be sentenced for his role in the Capitol riot, wears a horned hat and tattoos of Norse images. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

4. Co-opted Norse mythology

Among the most striking images of the January riot were those of a man wearing a horned hat and no shirt, displaying several large tattoos. He is known as Jake Angeli, but his full name is Jacob Chansley, and he has pleaded guilty to one of six charges as part of a plea deal for his role in the riot.

Tom Birkett, a lecturer in Old English at University College Cork in Ireland, explains that many of the symbols Chansley wore are from Norse mythology. However, he explains, “These symbols have also been co-opted by a growing far-right movement.”

Birkett traces the modern use of Norse symbols back to the Nazis and points out that they are a form of code hidden in plain sight: “If certain symbols are hard for the general public to spot, they are certainly dog whistles to members of an increasingly global white supremacist movement who know exactly what they mean.”

Rioters scale structures while flying flags outside the Capitol. — The yellow and red-striped flag of the defeated American-backed Republic of Vietnam flies at the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

5. An outlier, of sorts

Another flag was prominent at the Capitol riot, one that doesn’t strictly represent white supremacy: the flag of the former independent country of South Vietnam.

But Long T. Bui, a global studies scholar at the University of California, Irvine, explains that when flown by Vietnamese Americans, many of whom support Trump, the flag symbolizes militant nationalism.

“[S]ome Vietnamese Americans view their fallen homeland as an extension of the American push for freedom and democracy worldwide. I have interviewed Vietnamese American soldiers who fear American freedom is failing,” he explains.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives and is an update of an article previously published on Jan. 15, 2021.

Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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