New Slaves: Kanye West, Brad Paisley, and Contemporary Confederate-Flag Discourse in Popular Music Iconography

Abstract

One hundred and fifty years after Appomattox, the iconographic remains of America’s Civil War are still contested symbolic artifacts. Case in point: at the writing of this paper a state bill sat on California Governor Jerry Brown’s desk which would ban the sale of the Confederate flag or any merchandise with Confederate flag imagery on state property. Thus California has become the most recent battleground of the war between the states, or to word it in more precise language, California legislators have entered the debate over who controls a flag’s meaning and memory.