Those Poor, Sensitive Bigots

"Heritage" By Stanley Bermudez

Here’s an interesting find from Balloon Juice. It encompasses everything that is wrong and backwards about the “Southern Heritage” movement. They claim to disavow anything about the South that could be construed as racist, but want to enshrine the traditions that make them unique. Well, unfortunately, there’s no cleaving the two. the South was built up on the premise of slave labor and, when that crumbled (after a bloody civil war, mind you), a few generations of racial violence, terror, and intimidation that still haunt our discourse to this very day. The confederate flag is a symbol of all of that, no matter which way you slice it. It’s part and parcel of the argument that the ‘War of Northern Aggression’ was fought over ‘States’ Rights’. There’s an element of truth to that; the South wanted the right to own people and the North said no.

I recommend you read the whole story. It’s amazing the lengths to which some people will twist themselves to deny history. At the most, the confederate flag should be relegated to a dusty footnote in the annals of history, to be mocked with disdain whenever someone dredges it up; at the least it should be derided as the symbol of repression and oppression that it is.