Confederates Hiding in Attics Show Nature By Waving Flag

C-SPAN is easily becoming a channel that sparks my train of thought. This time it was the annual conference of the League of the South, an organization known for promoting the "heroic struggle of the Confederacy."

The conference itself was a bore. I was irritated but not really insulted after watching the league's president, Michael Hill, spend an hour comparing the situation of present citizens in the South with former slaves, which was disrespectful and exaggerated enough.

He could have used "nigger" every other word, and I would have expected it anyway. What caught my attention in the first place is the half-dozen Confederate flags waving at the conference.

Now, I have issues with this flag. Nowadays, the Confederate flag sits in a comfort zone where most people see it as "just" a flag, but in reality it is far more than that.

No matter how much people defend it as being a symbol of Southern pride, it is a racist flag. If it weren't, every Southerner would embrace it. Period.

Let's take a moment and cut the bull about the Civil War not being about slavery. If the South were not threatened with the removal of slavery, a long drawn-out war would have been unlikely. The flag was created to support slavery and therefore is stained with the blood, sweat and tears of my ancestors.

So why is the Confederate flag so popular? I know many people claim they wave the flag as only a Southern symbol and not as a hate flag.

However, many people who are racist wave it to make a point also. It doesn't matter the intention behind waving it -- it's the principle.

So see, it's not the flag itself that gets me. The fact that people get away with doing certain things and keeping certain practices in place is what gets on my nerves.

Let's compare the Confederate flag to the Nazi flag.

Both represent injustice to a distinct group of people based on differences between people. The Nazi flag, however, is not accepted as a way of showing pride in Germany.

Racists wave the Nazi flag and embrace the hate it represents, not average citizens wanting to display pride in their country. To most it represents a shameful past and history. A museum might display it, but don't expect to see it on every other bumper sticker!

It's the other way around with the Confederate flag, though. Only a small portion of Confederate flag-wavers admit they are racist, while most people who wave it are "not racist" and have a justification of why it's OK to wave it.

If you have to defend why you are waving a flag that offends people, it probably isn't right to wave it in the first place. Like I said, if the flag is so innocent, every Southerner would be waving the damn thing.

There is a catch-22 to this. Focusing one's effort on discrediting the Confederate flag means focusing on less important things.

I'm damned if I do voice my opinion on the topic because I am wasting energy and damned if I don't because it's taken as thinking the flag is OK.

Still, I don't advise anyone to get too bent out of shape over the flag's prominence, especially now that the flag is being waved just to piss people off. To give flag supporters the satisfaction defeats the purpose.

All that being said, I just wanted to add to the pile of Confederate flag commentary, and stir things up a little on our "liberal" UNC campus.

Praise me or condemn me, love me or hate me. It's all interchangeable. Contact me at drayton@email.unc.edu.