fifty50fifty:

I am thoroughly Southern. My family on my mother’s side is all Arkansas and my family on father’s side is all Alabama.  I’ve got a lot of Southern pride.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that after I get out and see the world a bit, I’ll come back to the South because there’s really no place on earth I’d rather live.

I love the South, so it really bothers me to see people who equate Southern pride with pride in the South’s immoral and racist history.  Some people do this intentionally, others unintentionally.  In both instances, I find it really disheartening.

I don’t understand why people fly Confederate flags and claim that it represents Southern heritage.  The South to me is so much more than a four year war that killed thousands of good people, Northern and Southern.  The South is more than its foundations in slave labour.

To me, the South is hot summers.  The South (at least in my Arkansas experience) is humidity that completely defeats the purpose of a hairdo.  The South is sweet tea, lakes and the Mighty Mississippi, old houses, mosquitos, dirt roads, watermelon and peaches and pears, comfort food like cornbread and grits.  The South is catfish and swimming holes and tire swings and slow talking, front porches and bare feet.  

The South is William Faulkner, Louis Armstrong, Rosa Parks, Atticus Finch, Bill Clinton, Zora Neale Hurston, Mike Disfarmer, Thomas Jefferson, Johnny Cash, Helen Keller, Elvis Presley, and Tennessee Williams.

Why pick one of the most shameful parts of your history and parade it as ‘heritage’?  If we claim that the South’s heritage is the Confederacy and the Civil War alone, we are glorifying mistakes and ignoring the true source of Southern pride: the ingenuity, perseverance, and character of Southern people, black and white.