About that flag …

There’s been a concerted effort for years to eliminate displays of the Confederate flag.

Now in the wake of the shootings in South Carolina there’s a new push to take down that flag flying above a monument to Confederate war dead on the state capitol grounds in Columbia. 

Activists also want to strike the use of Confederate flag elements that grace many state flags in the South, such as in the state flags of Florida and Mississippi.  They see the Confederate flag – or any resemblance to that flag – as emblems of slavery and racism. 

Recently one liberal commentator on TV said that there is a “toxic cocktail” in the South that led to the shootings in South Carolina. The continuing display of the Confederate flag is part of that toxic cocktail, according to him, that symbolizes the latent racism by Southern whites toward anyone who isn’t white and also encourages attacks on blacks. 

What a complete asshole. But as a Southerner by birth, graduate of a Southern university, and someone who grew up surrounded by Southerners, it’s what we from the South expect. 

Especially from arrogant, liberal jerks from the North. 

To those pontificating pricks the South is a wasteland of redneck cracker bastards and right-wing religious fanatics who long for the days of whupping slaves and selling cotton, and keeping women barefoot and pregnant. When Southerners aren’t burning crosses and lynching blacks, they must be keeping blacks from voting, fighting against women’s rights, and trying to turn back the clock to the 1950s at best, but 1850 if they can. 

In the view of Northern liberals most of the South is an ignorant backwater – the exclusions being its golf courses and beaches. They can’t understand why workers in the South continue to reject unions. They can’t fathom why Republicans and conservative Democrats keep winning elections there.  It’s a mystery to them why so many in the South still cling to their guns and Bibles, when so many in the North want to ban guns and dismiss religion and faith as affronts to people who don’t have either. 

In short, what really offends liberals from the North is that people in the South don’t automatically think the way they think.   

No, to them the South is a poorly drawn cartoon – Lil’ Abner and the Beverly Hillbillies come to life – full of hicks and hayseeds, racists and haters, goobers and gun nuts, and a cultural abyss.  Why else would Southerners so jealously guard a way of life that time and “real” culture have passed by?

Why would the South still tolerate such an offensive symbol as the Confederate flag, for example, when enlightened people everywhere see it as a symbol of hatred and oppression?

Here’s the point Northern liberals miss. 

Being a Southerner has less to do with geography and more to do with what you believe in, how you treat others, and your values. I may live in the North now, but I will always be a Southerner and proud of it. My sister and I grew up in the same places, but she attended a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, never left that area, and will always be a Northerner.

She identifies with the liberal North; I identify with the more conservative South. To her, the South is a place; to me it’s a state of mind that transcends geography.    

Millions of Northerners have fled the high taxes, bad weather, and eroding quality of life in the North to start over in the South.  Most will never become Southerners, and have merely turned parts of the South they’ve invaded into a warmer version of the old North.  In doing so, they’ve brought all their bad habits and annoying ways with them.

A perfect example is Boca Raton, now full of pretentious, obnoxious former Northerners and part-time residents who bitch and moan constantly about the heat, the traffic, how slow and stupid waiters and waitresses are, and how difficult it is to find good help.

They don’t consider where they live the South, and in truth they’ve mutated the area into something alien to most Southerners.  But if they got off their lazy pasty white asses and drove their Mercedes and Beamers as little as 20 miles outside Boca they’d find themselves in another world. And some of them might even grow to love what they find, and may become Southerners. 

They might discover what native and also adopted Southerners think is important. Honesty.  Dignity of work.  Courtesy.  Personal accountability.  Service to others.  Belief in something more important than yourself.  And family.  All that transcends race, ethnicity, religion and geography. 

I think most of them would be very surprised to learn that simple courtesy – something they haven’t seen in the North for decades – lives on in the South. 

But what about the Southern racists the Northern media is always pointing out? 

Are there racists in the South?  Sure.  But no more than there are racists in the North. One of the largest Klan rallies in US history took place in Northeastern New Jersey, attracting an estimated 40,000 participants.  When Boston schools were forced to integrate, outraged Bostonians pelted the buses carrying black kids with rocks and set some on fire. When block-busting in the North started, white flight left whole neighborhoods in shambles. Today it’s not unusual to learn that someone spray-painted racial slurs on houses in certain neighborhoods in Philadelphia where blacks have moved in

If you want to start defining areas of racism, then Northerners need look no further than their own backyards. As a kid in the 60s, I went to integrated schools.  In the South. We didn’t think much about it.  Nor did our parents.   

How many liberals in the North can say the same?  How many liberals in the North have moved just to get into a mostly white school district?  How many even today send their kids to mostly white schools to avoid potential “problems” for their precious little snowflakes?

My liberal sister and probably many of her liberal Northern friends did just that.

But let’s get back to that flag.  The Confederate flag.  True, in the 1960s it was hijacked by white supremacists and segregationists; unfortunately, crackpots like them will always be with us.

However, just because some nutjobs adopt a symbol doesn’t mean that’s what the symbol stands for.  For example, the Klan burned crosses – but that doesn’t mean the cross is a sign of racial animus. Far from it.

Nor are displays of the Confederate flag flying above monuments in the South honoring those soldiers who died on the losing side – some 260,000 – during the Civil War, meant to honor slavery. They are there to honor a heritage, not a specific issue.   

In a day and age when we put up monuments to honor people killed by mass murderers, it seems to me that monuments honoring the thousands of Confederate war dead should not be a big deal. Flying the flag they fought under over those monuments shouldn’t be either.    

Those Confederate soldiers were not evil monsters but someone’s husband, son, father, brother or friend fighting to defend their land, their families, and their freedom to live their lives the way they wanted.  Their motivations weren’t much different from the troops under Washington during the Revolutionary War, which wasn’t that far removed in time. Protecting the right to own slaves was pretty much irrelevant to them; only a very tiny fraction had anything to do with slavery. 

Now, as far as the Confederate flag being a symbol of Southern slavery and oppression, please remember that it was New England slave merchants – some of the leading aristocratic families in the North – who got rich bringing slaves to America. 

So if you want a flag that symbolizes slavery, you might consider the American flag as well.

Maybe that’s why I feel so aggrieved when talking heads, pundits, and race baiters in New York and Washington start talking about the backward, racist South they believe still remains. 

Do you want to know what the true South is about?  All you need to do is look at the aftermath in South Carolina after the shootings – not the non-stop crap about how racist the shooter was – but how the community in Charleston and South Carolina in general responded. 

Did you see any riots?  Did you see looting and burning of neighborhoods? Did you see whites accosted by blacks, or blacks accosted by whites?   

No. Of course not. Instead of pandemonium, you sensed real embarrassment on the local level that something so heinous could happen in their community and their state.   

What you saw was Southerners – defined more by culture and shared beliefs, not race or religion – joining together in respectful mourning, and a call for forgiveness for the shooter. Then you saw over 3,000 people join hands across a bridge in Charleston to symbolize their solidarity against violence and racism.

Or maybe you didn’t, because most news outlets this morning didn’t cover that. But they did write extensively on the Confederate flag and how so many people were offended by it.   

Honestly, I don’t care one way or the other whether South Carolina takes down the Confederate flag.  But I’d rather that decision be made by the people who actually live there, instead of outsiders imposing their will on the locals. 

Enough about that flag.