This is a normal, everyday sentence used in Central Florida and Southern Florida. I would hear this regularly growing up amongst my friends and family, never really grasping what it actually meant. Those that I knew and loved would wear Confederate Flag style t-shirts, but preached that it was not racism.
I tried several times having this conversation with loved ones, so I could understand where they were coming from. So I could feel like I belonged among my people, without the confusion of what the Confederacy stood for. I knew that the Civil War was mostly over slavery, and that a large part of the Civil War was going on because the North soldiers wanted to bring an end to owning people. I remember being the young age of 16, when I asked one of my uncles, why do we hang up a Confederate Flag in the garage? Isn’t it about slavery? I specifically remember this sentence coming out of his mouth: “ The Civil War was about MORE than just slavery. Did you know that they also wanted to have two Presidents?” I didn’t know how to follow up with a debate, only being 16 years old and not even going through government class in high school. It just didn’t seem like a good reason to hang up a flag.
As I continued growing up in this atmosphere, I would hear people say things like, the South will rise again, not knowing exactly what we would need to rise against. Did the people of the South want two presidents? Why would we need two of them? What exactly did they want to rise again in the South?
Over the past year we have seen the United States finally acting fairly, of course starting minimally not to scare people too much. They started removing some of the Civil War statues that stood for the Confederacy, as opposed to standing for the good of the United States. As I started to hear that we were going to remove the statues, I was totally on board. I thought, why not? Why would we want to remember the bad guys in the United States? Shouldn’t we have statues that memorialize how we treated people because of the color of their skin? Wouldn’t that be the correct way to not forget history? Wouldn’t that give us more of an opportunity to teach people not to be hateful like our ancestors were? These all seemed like well, thought-out questions to ask those who were so angry about the statues being removed. This is when I started to hear a new phrase come back up again from my past, Heritage, not hate.
One of my uncles belongs to a group called The Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy. I don’t know much about the group, but I do know that they meet at a Perkins once a month and say some type of pledge of allegiance to the Confederate flag in memorial of those ancestors that fought in the War. I wondered why my uncle would want to belong to a group that pays respect two people that wanted to continue down the path of being able to own people. In my eyes, I was deeply ashamed that my family members would do something so horrible to someone, and I want to take opportunities to show that we are a different people now, and that we would never stand for something so disgusting. Unfortunately, I seem to be one of the only people amongst my friends and relatives that feel the same way as I do about the proper way to show respect to your heritage. The same people felt that we are showing respect to our heritage, and are not feeding into the hateful theologies that run parallel with other prejudiced groups that exist in the United States right now, groups that run in line with the Klu Klux Klan. There was no way that I was accepting that the Confederate Flag could stand for celebrating the veterans of the Civil War as opposed to being a flag that stood for slavery.
I had to look up more information, research that would back me against my friends and family, because I didn’t want to start a battle that I was not equipped to handle on my own. I knew from the get-go that I was going to be alone in this battle, with very little backing from people I care about, with the exception of a few of my friends that came to terms with the fact that we were treating people like garbage based on the color of their skin. I started my research on the "Heritage, not Hate" movement, and how it began in the southern states of the United States. I came across an astounding website that explains the correlation between prejudices that exist, and the Confederate Flag. Here is the website:
http://www.newsweek.com/are-confederate-monuments-our-heritage-or-symbols-hate-633678
If you don’t take the time to look at the website, I will give you a short summary of the research pertaining to the ideology that there is no relation between racism and the Confederate Flag. A group of people were asked questions about their knowledge of the American Civil War, and what the main arguments were of the Confederate Army at that time, these groups of people representing residents of Georgia and South Carolina. They were asked questions about the Confederacy specifically regarding the history, assuming that the flag representing legacy would be backed by people being knowledgeable in the history. These people were also asked questions in order to see their perception on race, and their take on interracial dating. The study showed that the more questions about Civil War history that a participant answered correctly, the less likely it was that the person favored the Confederate Flag. People who failed to answer any question correctly were more than twice as likely to favor the Confederate Flag.The study also found that people who objected to interracial dating are much more supportive of the Confederate Flag than are people who are okay with interracial dating. Last, the study showed that people who claim that blacks do not face discrimination, or that are not harmed by discrimination, are much more supportive of the Confederate battle emblem than are those who believe that discrimination against blacks is real.
So what other ideas can be presented that corroborate the Confederate Flag standing for anything other than prejudices? How can it actually be heritage, and not hate?
[photo credit] (https://imgflip.com/i/nicuk)
