For those of you that say removal of the confederate flags is somewhat of an excuse

[mmonk]

or cover to do nothing else and has limited value beyond symbolism, I disagree. As someone who is involved wherever possible in the south to remove them, I hope this well written article will give you some perspective. The flag as heritage instead of hate is the excuse to say laws that protect persons of color is an exaggeration of government overreach, we're post racial, and to resist subtle laws to enforce civil rights laws and also be used to justify the recent Supreme Court decision to strike down provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Also, you're saying the work we do to correct the record has little merit. I hope this article resonates:

Red Strings and Black Lives: reality confronts mythical 'heritage' in a Southern Town.

Paradoxically, the vast majority of the descendents of those who defied and cursed the Confederacy - the draft dodgers, deserters, and militant Unionists - today pay homage to the memory of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson and honor the Confederate battle flag. Indeed, most of the progeny of the anti-Confederate participants in the inner civil war have no knowledge or recollection of it; they think their Confederate era ancestors were all selflessly dedicated to The Lost Cause from beginning to end. Southerners suffer from a severe case of collective historical amnesia. Few traumatic episodes in a people's past have been so successfully blocked from the communal memory as has been the fratricidal inner civil war that raged between white Southerners in the Quaker Belt and in many other areas of the South during the War Between the States.

Few citizens of the United States today have ever heard of the Heroes of America or the Red Strings or about the protracted struggle against Confederate power by those who remained loyal Americans in the Tar Heel state after secession. With the almost complete domination of state politics for a century after the 1876 election by the Democratic Party, a romantic vision of the Confederacy as a noble defender of a "Lost Cause" against a crude Yankee behemoth permeated all ranks of society in the Tar Heel state. In that vision there was no room for the Heroes of America, the Red Strings, antislavery Quakers and Moravians, Wesleyan abolitionists, antisecession Whigs, Copperheads, William Owens, the Dial Brothers, Harrison Church, Johns Quincy Adams Bryan, Lewis Hanes, or Bryan Tyson. As a result, their rebellion against the Confederacy and their championing of the Union cause remain in the historical shadows.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/11/1410133/-Red-Strings-and-Black-Lives-reality-confronts-mythical-heritage-in-a-Southern-town


Some of you swear by identity politics as the only way. I say a little knowledge dislodges misperceptions. The perception that the confederate flag was about heritage, not hate can block of lot of admissions and movement forward towards a better society cognizant of racial institutionalization.

Have a great day.