Being white and from So. California, I didn’t spend much of my early life thinking about the confederate flag one way or the other. Sure, that battle flag was the symbol of the Dumb Redneck, and meant that if you saw it on a pickup truck you didn’t want to follow that truck too closely on your motorcycle because you might get a wad of chewing tobacco spit in your face. Racial symbolism? What… ever.

Then I went with my (black) wife to a Gamble Plantation “confederate days” event here in Manatee County.

“Wow,” she said, “It’s like all these people are sad because they grew up too late to own slaves, but at least they can put on costumes and pretend.”

I have friends who are heavily into civil war re-enactments and play characters on the confederate side, but are about as non-racist as a human can be. And my wife is certainly not against historical dress-up; she often goes to renaissance fairs dressed in full “wench” garb.

But there are also parts of our history that, while they should certainly be acknowledged, should not be glorified. The people who built America were often a bloody lot — and I include the African forebears of most slaves, and the displaced Native Americans in this statement, too. Basically, if you go back far enough, all of us have ancestors who owned slaves at some point — and oppressed hell out of neighboring peoples whenever they could get away with it.

Maybe the battle flag-flyers are simply honoring their ancestors and don’t intend to come across as racist. But still, they are being rude as hell to their black neighbors. And for that reason alone, they should haul down their flags and try to find less offensive symbols of their heritage.

I’d suggest a Confederate Army forage cap as an appropriate memorial to southern troops; it’s really more emblematic of the Army itself than the oft-misused battle flag, and is less likely to piss off slaves’ descendants.

(I originally posted this as a comment here.)

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