Why I Cannot Stand the Confederate Flag

For the same reasons you can’t either. I have seen the Confederate Flag just like the Nazi Swastika. Brings back painful memories. At Ku Klux Klan rallies, one of which I saw from a highway in Texas, that flag is there. In white supremacist literature, that flag is there. There is an even pro-white organization with chapters in non-southern states that has the flag on its website. Seeing that flag just stirs up feelings in me. That flag was flown to defend state’s rights during the Civil War – part of which was the efforts to keep slavery legal. States do not have the constitutional right to practice injustice or immorality. If I’m wrong about that, please correct me. That flag was on the wrong side of history. I do not wish I was in that land of cotton. I do not like hearing the song “Dixie.” Those are my personal feelings. Others, white and even some Black southerners, see the confederate flag as a symbol to the resistance of a centralized federal government and pride of heritage.

I also do not like government buildings, such as the Russell Senate Building in Washington, D.C., named after white supremacists. I’m glad Dick Gregory is trying to change that. I also do not like statues in Washington D.C. honoring one of the original members of the KKK such as General Albert Pike, in a majority Black city. I wonder who is doing something about that?

The NAACP is promoting an economic boycott of the state of South Carolina because of the Confederate flag flown on state grounds there. As I said, that flag offends me greatly and I do not mind that flag be not only taken down but burned and buried. However, I would rather action be taken against more tangible problems in the Black community rather than a fighting a symbol. If and when the flag goes, it does nothing to solve the present problems of, as the brilliant writer M.D.Currington lists:

We address ourselves as bitch and nigga rather than ma'am or sir.
We are children whose mothers are hooked on drugs, alcohol and engage in prostitution
We are children whose fathers are absent - we've either never met them, they are in jail, and/or for some ridiculous reason we haven't spoken to them in years.
We are babies who have babies ending up as single parents
Our children are gang members who don't believe that they will live to be old men and women.
We have family members with very serious criminal histories - some are incarcerated.
We are welfare recipients and high school drop-outs
We rent and do not own
We chose flashy, expensive cars and loud sound systems and drive home to rented houses & apartments with no computers inside.
Some of us are employed, but few of us are entrepreneurs.

What offends you more, the Confederate flag or the previous list of current problems that a flag cannot solve? I hope the boycott of South Carolina is not taking money from Black business owners and making them suffer and adding to the list of problems.

By the way, who protested the Confederate flag on the car the “General Lee” on that old TV series The Dukes of Hazzard? Don’t you think it was very difficult to protest a Confederate flag when you saw the Dukes Brothers driving Miss Daisy Dukes in extra-short Southern Fried Hot Pants?