Saturday, June 20, 2015

A modest suggestion

This is the Stars and Bars. (Yes, this one, not the battle flag.) Or if we don't want to get hung up the terminology, this is the first national flag of the CSA.

You almost certainly didn't recognize it, because hardly anybody does. So here's my suggestion:

If you sincerely want to honor your Confederate ancestors for gallantry or whatever it is you say, try a different flag. Use this one.

Because whatever they may have been "originally," a black swastika in a white circle on a red field is not an innocuous Hindu symbol and the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hateful, terrorizing racism.

And if it's really about "heritage, not hate", you don't want people to misunderstand you.

(ps: here's an historian's take)
(pps: not going to get into a discussion about whether hate isn't the "heritage", though as a child of the South I am qualified. That's not the point. If you don't want people to think it's true, stop displaying a symbol that no longer has any other real meaning.)

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