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Watching some of the Republican candidates pander to the South Carolinians and their curious habit of flying the Confederate Flag was historically sad considering it was the first Republican president who took the country to war to destroy that flag and all it stood for.

On Real Time with Bill Maher last week, D.L. Hughley said that the Rebel Flag stands for “We’ll keep n****rs in their place.” To a lot of Americans, especially here in the North, the Confederate Flag stands for hatred, religious bigotry, and sour grapes. Even 150+ years after the closing of the Civil War, the confederate flag evokes painful ingrown emotions of strife, and cultural divisions which still ache.

But that isn’t the only reading of this symbol.

I spent a lot of time in Southern Georgia as a child, specifically in Albany, GA–site of some of the worst clashes in the Civil Rights movement. Racism was alive and well last time I was down there. I spent my time with successful, white Christian Americans who were never racist forthright but there was an understood subfloor of Us and Them that didn’t need to be spoken about. And I believe the Confederate Flag for them was much less about hatred of other races and religions but about Sweet Iced Tea, Softball games in the middle of the week, sitting on the front porch watching the kudzu climb the tall trees and trying to be as simple a person as you would want to deal with yourself.

I also think, for many, that the Confederate Flag is very much a symbol of individuality, of the Revolution that many patriots felt it was their life’s mission to engage in to defend their country from falling to a centralized government that would make war against other nations who hadn’t attacked it first, against the world falling into the sad state of perpetual war fueled by modern weapons of death which propelled our species through the last century with bloody and brutal efficiency.

Personally, I understand the Confederate Flag as a symbol much the way I understand the Swastika the National Socialists in Germany subverted and the way that the Roman Empire assumed the symbol of the cross, stuck it on their shields and tried to conquer the known world in the perverted name of a man who sought to teach the rest of us everlasting peace with each other.

So, while I respect the political and rebellious reference of the symbol of the Confederate Flag, I know enough to know that putting it on my car, wearing it on a T-shirt, or carrying it around on my guitar case is likely going to evoke emotions in others that I don’t want to evoke and could promote perceptions about myself which are simply untrue and could lead to deleterious consequences for my own health and safety.

Keep the stars and bars in the history books and let’s pretend like we’re culturally intelligent enough to learn from our mistakes.

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