In the small town in which I live I have started to see a disturbing trend: a spike in the number of Confederate flags waving proudly from the back of pickup trucks. These aren't simply flags in a window, or flags on a bumper sticker (things that have always been in my little town), but big flags on poles planted by design on the pickup bed. One of the trucks has a small American flag on one side, and a larger Confederate flag on the other side of the truck bed. Another flies the Confederate flag alone, along with a sticker saying "Always been a rebel" as well as an OU sticker on the back window. I'm safe in saying that actually going to college has probably never been an option for the driver.
I look at these trucks and the drivers are all very young. What, exactly, do they think that they are doing? We don't live in the South; in fact Kansas has a history centered on what it was going to be, slave or free, and ultimately and proudly chose free. Osawatomie, Kansas (last town of one of my grandparents), is where the great abolitionist John Brown spent at least some time. It's not that Kansas really has a problem with racism; we are a tolerant, moderate people, even with the short-sightedness of current government officials. It's not as if slavery and/or racism has ever been thought of as a good thing in these parts.
And so these young drivers, if asked, probably would say something like, "I don't hate black people. It's all about states' rights! I hate the federal government trying to tell me what to do, to take away my guns." And so, in opposition to all that, let's pick out a symbol that for most people means hatred and bigotry and under which in South Carolina there was a recent mass killing in the name of racial purity. It's a flag under which many people went to war to fight against the country that they now live in, a flag that stands in marked opposition to the other flag that redneck #1 also has planted on the back of his pickup truck.
I get it. People have free speech, and they get to protest how they want. Accepting free speech means that you have to put up with a lot of really dumb free speech. I don't want to go down the road of banning symbols and words.
But really, if you hate things so much, isn't there a better way than to fly a flag that for so many represents one of the darkest periods in our nations' history? Do you have to make your point by waving proudly a flag that people in the years since the civil war has been used to still intimidate minorities and express hatred? I know...for you it means one thing. But for the rest of us, it's a sign of your stupidity.
