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ww.collegiatetimes.com/opinion/pride-not-prejudice-confederate-battle-flag-an-emblem-of-southern/article_93b42bee-22c4-11e7-a9cd-57a651742178.html

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http://www.collegiatetimes.com/opinion/pride-not-prejudice-confederate-battle-flag-an-emblem-of-southern/article_93b42bee-22c4-11e7-a9cd-57a651742178.html

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http://www.historynet.com/embattled-banner-the-convoluted-history-of-the-confederate-flag.htm

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http://www.southerncultures.org/article/confederate-battle-flag-symbol-southern-heritage-identity/

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http://www.historynet.com/embattled-banner-the-convoluted-history-of-the-confederate-flag.htm

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culturally-speaking/201507/the-confederate-flag-heritage-or-hate

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http://www.usflag.org/confederate.stars.and.bars.html

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https://thetylt.com/culture/confederate-flag-racism-southern-heritage-hate

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The Confederate Flag Is a Matter of Pride and Heritage, Not Hatred

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Some racists display the Confederate battle flag, as well as the Christian cross and the American flag. Should these symbols be seen as racist too?

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred?

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ww.collegiatetimes.com/opinion/pride-not-prejudice-confederate-battle-flag-an-emblem-of-southern/article_93b42bee-22c4-11e7-a9cd-57a651742178.html

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http://www.historynet.com/embattled-banner-the-convoluted-history-of-the-confederate-flag.htm

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

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hhttps://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/confederate-flag-racist_n_7639788.html

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https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/race-society/confederate-flag-divisive-politics-and-enduring-meanings

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https://www.ft.com/content/444174ce-8690-11e7-8bb1-5ba57d47eff7

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http://www.historynet.com/embattled-banner-the-convoluted-history-of-the-confederate-flag.htm

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If you drive in either direction on 460 from Blacksburg, Virginia, you are bound to come across dozens of proudly flown Confederate battle flags. As humans, we best understand the world around us by categorizing things in distinct ways. We have a tendency to mark something as either incredibly racist or a symbol of regional pride, disregarding the fact that different people raise that flag for different reasons.

The Confederate battle flag is explicitly a symbol of the South in the United States. And to get at the core of what it should mean as a symbol, you have to understand the different issues at play during the Civil War. Different schools teach different lessons when it comes to explaining the Civil War's causes.

The Civil War was primarily caused by the South's support of slavery, and the North and the federal government's opposition to slavery for moral reasons. What many people who are not from the South forget though is how much the South depended on slavery for its economic security. To abolish slavery, immediately and completely, would have placed the South in financial ruin. And it was beginning to think that it was losing all control over how slavery was addressed.

Yes, the war was about slavery, but it was also about self-governance and the nature of government. It was about being able to control what happens to you and asserting the right to decide how you are governed. I understand this sounds hypocritical and backward since, in the name of democracy, these men were fighting, in part, for their right to limit completely the freedom of slaves.

Although, as opposing columnists have pointed out, the flying of the Confederate battle flag seemed to lose connection to the actual Civil War, and wasn't seen again for almost a century.

From my experience with people who fly or wear the Confederate battle flag, many of them are not aware of its use as a tool for antagonization and prejudice during the Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps if more people were aware of this history, they would be less inclined to display the flag. Unfortunately, when we disagree with one another, we too often do not focus on enlightening or understanding others, but instead on shaming and separating ourselves from them.

There have been so many issues in American politics in which we, in the process of trying to prove that one side is right or wrong, have further divided our nation without care for the consequences.

The issue many people face with the bearing of the Confederate battle flag is that it is racist in and of itself. To many, and some would argue a majority of the people, who fly this flag or otherwise display it, it is a symbol of southern pride.

Everyone I have known who displays the Confederate battle flag has said they fly it for heritage, to show that they are proud to live in the South and proud to live out in the country. The flag might mean something horrible to others, but why is it so difficult to believe that it means something entirely different to people whose families have a history in the South or who are proud to live here?

It seems shortsighted and noncommittal to cast out every person who displays a Confederate battle flag as racist. Because the flag is, hopefully, not the primary problem here. The primary problem, the actual cause of this whole argument, is that we must eradicate racism in this country.

I'll agree with my opposition in that not publicly displaying a flag that some consider to be a symbol of white supremacy or racism is a good place to start, but fighting the flying of the Confederate flag is not essential to fighting racism because the people who fly it are not inevitably racist.

I come from a suburban town in central Virginia, where dozens of people in my high school class either wore or adorned their vehicles with the Confederate battle flag. It would be wrong of me to assume that just because those people adorned a symbol that some interpret as racist, that they must be racist themselves. Because isn't part of fighting racism about fighting stereotypes? Isn't it about changing the way people treat others and the way they understand them?

It is important to understand the history of symbols and to be sensitive to what your words and actions might mean to other people, but we must be conscientious of all viewpoints, not just our own. And we must respond to others' opinions not with disgust or condemnation, but with a willingness to learn, teach and compromise.

Crossfire: A dark piece of history: Confederate battle flag symbolizes racism, hatred

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Pride, not prejudice: Confederate battle flag an emblem of southern heritage, culture

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If you drive in either direction on 460 from Blacksburg, Virginia, you are bound to come across dozens of proudly flown Confederate battle flags. As humans, we best understand the world around us by categorizing things in distinct ways.

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http://www.southerncultures.org/article/confederate-battle-flag-american-history-culture/

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

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http://www.newsweek.com/are-confederate-monuments-our-heritage-or-symbols-hate-633678

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/confederate-flag-south-carolina-congressional-race/index.html

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http://www.wcvb.com/article/black-lives-matter-activist-known-for-snatching-confederate-flag-shot-killed/16755159

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A man fatally shot in New Orleans has been identified as a Black Lives Matter activist known for his leap through police tape at a South Carolina demonstration last year as he attempted to seize a Confederate battle flag from a protester.

A police officer answering a call about gunfire early Tuesday found Muhiyidin Elamin Moye, 32, on the ground, asking for help near the Treme neighborhood, about eight blocks from the French Quarter, according to a police report.

He was better known as Muhiyidin d'Baha. Moye's family told South Carolina news outlets Muhiyidin Elamin Moye was his legal name.

The report says a bloody trail to the body circled two blocks, and a bloody bicycle lay across the street.

Moye was shot in the thigh about 1:30 a.m. and died in a hospital, New Orleans police spokesman Beau Tidwell said Wednesday. It was not immediately clear what led to the shooting.

"No further information on this incident is currently available," police spokesman Gary Scheets said in an email.

The responding officer saw a traffic camera and a car repair business's surveillance camera in the area, according to the police report. Officials did not say if the camera captured images that might help the investigation.

Last February, a news camera recorded Moye jumping through police tape in Charleston, South Carolina, as he tried to take a protester's large Confederate battle flag before being tackled by police and arrested. At the time, demonstrations were going on outside a theater at the College of Charleston for a speech by Bree Newsome, an activist who climbed a flagpole and temporarily removed a Confederate flag from in front of the South Carolina Statehouse in 2015.

DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, said Moye was a fearless man whose death is a big loss for Charleston and the movement. He said they met in 2015, after the highly publicized fatal shooting of Walter Scott by a white North Charleston police officer.

"He was a strong leader who deeply understood the role of community and the power of helping other people recognize that role," Mckesson said.

Moye was taking a personal trip to New Orleans, niece Camille Weaver told the Post and Courier of Charleston.

She told the newspaper that her uncle was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and grew up in Hollywood, South Carolina, just west of Charleston.

"He loved Charleston and loved fighting for what's right," she said. "I've never met anyone more committed and hardworking than him. He was an asset to the Charleston community and will be greatly missed."

As word of Moye's death spread, members of the Black Lives Matter movement in Charleston, South Carolina, gathered outside of North Charleston City Hall.

It was the same place Moye first made a name for himself with passionate speeches in the days after Scott, an unarmed black man, was killed by a white North Charleston police officer as he ran from a traffic stop. Moye would later interrupt city council meetings to demand leaders change policies to give the public more power to assure police accountability.

"What better place than where he actually catapulted the justice mission and message to the world," Thomas Dixon, a pastor and activist who worked with Moye, said of the place for the vigil.

Another activist at the vigil said Moye is irreplaceable.

"The intellectualism, the fire, the desire, the motivation, the way he rallied people in the city was just second to none," Johnathan Thrower said.

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Black Lives Matter activist known for snatching Confederate flag shot, killed

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A man fatally shot in New Orleans has been identified as a Black Lives Matter activist known for his leap through police tape at a South Carolina demonstration last year as he attempted to seize a Confederate battle flag from a protester.

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http://www.historynet.com/confederate-flag

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http://www.historynet.com/embattled-banner-the-convoluted-history-of-the-confederate-flag.htm

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/

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https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/confederate-flag

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https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/24/us/confederate-flag-myths-facts/index.html

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https://insertlearning.com/v1/share/d0wjxgo2

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My passage into the South began with a move from my homeland in California to the center of Virginia to pursue graduate studies over fifteen years ago. My move raised many an eyebrow among my West Coast comrades, who warned me that I would be living amongst cows and chickens. This did not turn out to be true, as I discovered that Charlottesville, Virginia was a quaint and progressive college town. What did surprise me were pervasive symbols of the Confederacy embedded into the fabric of daily life.

I was puzzled and frightened to encounter streets, parks, and monuments named after Southern Civil War figures. I had moved Virginia on the heels of the last statewide celebration of Lee-Jackson-King Day. For those of you who have never heard of the holiday (I hadn't), it was enacted in 1983 as an effort to jointly celebrate Confederate Generals Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee, bizarrely, on the same day as Civil Right's Activist Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 2000, Virginia Governor Gilmore proposed splitting Lee-Jackson-King Day into two separate holidays after debate arose over whether a holiday which simultaneously celebrated Confederate generals and a civil rights icon was, well, incongruous. Thus, the two holidays are now celebrated separately as Lee-Jackson Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Interestingly, Lee-Jackson Day is now observed on the Friday right before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I soon learned how cherished the memory of the Confederacy is to many Southerners. Nonetheless, as an African American, who did not grow up around these symbols, they still jar me to the core when I am confronted with them. I now live in Kentucky and each day during my trek from the parking lot to my office at the University of Louisville I am visually assaulted by a 70-foot-tall obelisk in the center of a busy intersection. It is the largest Civil War monument in the state, made of granite with German-designed Confederate soldiers made of bronze. The soldiers are an artillerist, a cavalryman, and an infantryman, all dressed in war gear. Owned by the city of Louisville, the monument commemorates the "sacrifice" of Confederate veterans. Although some community activists have called for the monument's removal, both the city and university oppose such proposals.

What message might the presence of this monument communicate to African Americans like me? The monument was erected to celebrate people who were willing to die for the right to keep a whole race of people permanently enslaved. Such symbols serve as environmental microaggressions, subtle forms of racism, that contribute to the ongoing distress and traumatization of African Americans. African Americans may endure microaggressions in many forms over the course of a day or a lifetime, and the cumulative toll contributes to stress and unwellness, that can increase susceptibility to more serious conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder.

The Confederate Battle Flag is itself a microaggression. Supporters use the flag to celebrate the courage and valor of their Confederate ancestors, however it also serves as a painful reminder to those of us with a cultural memory of the horrors of slavery. Keep in mind that the leader of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, had this to say about my people: "African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing," and "You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be." Despite the fact that the Civil War ended 150 years ago, African Americans as a group continue to suffer due to our stigmatized minority status. My mother tells me stories of her experiences in the segregated South and as a Civil Rights activist in college, and although many things have improved since then, it strikes me that Jim Crow was really not that long ago.

Meanwhile, as Black America struggles for true equality, the Confederate flag is embraced by White supremacists. A photo of shooter Dylann Roof waving the Confederate flag before he murdered 9 Black people in a church nicely illustrates the point.

I was curious as to what possible rationale people known as "Flaggers" could advance for the ongoing support of those who came down on the wrong side of history. I visited a few Flagger websites, and was stricken to discover that a ceremonial hoisting of the flag occurred just a week ago in Virginia. The dedication read as follows: "The Battle Flag will fly as a living breathing memorial to those men, and all of our Confederate soldiers and Veterans. . . To the glory of God and in memory and honor of our Confederate heroes. 1861-1865." I could only stare in disbelief as I examined the photo of a White man dressed in a Confederate uniform, smiling in front of a flag raised by a busy highway.

So let's clarify a few things here. First of all, people who willingly fought for the right to own slaves are not heroes. They were criminals and deserve all the shame and dishonor that we can heap upon them for their actions. Had these people won the war, I and my whole family would be slaves, to be bought, sold, beaten, or raped at the whim of the master. That is not a cause anyone should fight for. People whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy should not be happily hoisting battle flags. They should be pensively reflecting on the horrors of a war that was fought to maintain a Southern economy driven on the backs of human chattel.

In Germany, there are many people whose ancestors were members of the Nazi Party, who even fought for Hitler and gassed Jews. Their descendants are not proud of what they did, rather they are ashamed of it. They certainly don't parade around with Nazi flags or sport little swastika bumper stickers that shout "heritage not hate." Instead they make their high school students visit concentration camps so the next generation can learn how to prevent this sort of tragedy in the future. We can take a lesson from the Germans. Most of them know that putting a whole race of people in concentration camps was wrong. Likewise, enslaving a whole race of people is wrong too. We shouldn't celebrate the honor of those who fought for the right to own slaves because there is no honor in it. Confederate soldiers deserve no monuments, no flags, no glory, and no honor. 750,000 people were killed in the Civil War, a failed armed rebellion against our nation. It's time to dismantle those monuments and remove the Confederate flag from public property.

Is there a place for the Confederate Battle Flag? Yes, in museums as a symbol of pain, tears, death, regret, failure, and loss. America is still working to repair the damage caused by enslaving and subjugating a whole race of human beings. Although the Civil War is over, our country still bleeds.
Real American Hero Bree Newsome takes down the Confederate Battle Flag at the South Carolina State Capitol.

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My passage into the South began with a move from my homeland in California to the center of Virginia to pursue graduate studies over fifteen years ago. My move raised many an eyebrow among my West Coast comrades, who warned me that I would be living amongst cows and chickens.

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THE CONFEDERATE FLAG

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The Confederate battle flag was raised outside the South Carolina Statehouse again Monday, but it rose on a pole that was planted in a temporary plastic stand - not in the earth.

The ceremony was timed to mark the second anniversary of the state's decision to remove a Civil War banner that for many white southerners was an emblem of pride - and a symbol of racism to just about everybody else.

But the flag-raising was also a protest against recent moves by lawmakers in Southern cities like New Orleans and elsewhere to remove Confederate monuments from the public areas where they have stood for decades.

"They are trying to demonize and vilify our ancestors 150 years after their deaths," South Carolina Secessionist Party president James Bessenger insisted.

His words were met with derision from the demonstrators who far outnumbered the two-dozen or so flag supporters, some of whom showed up wearing replicas of the Confederate gray uniforms of their forefathers.

"Go home, you're not wanted here," one protester cried out. "You lost then and you'll lose again. Go home Confederates!"

The flag was raised by a white Secessionist party member dressed in a Confederate uniform named Braxton Spivey and a black woman named Arlene Barnum.

Barnum, who was wearing the kind of frock that many slaves wore during the Civil War, has become a fixture at pro-Confederate rallies. She was in New Orleans in April to protest the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue. And she stuck to the South Carolina Secessionist Party line that the war was not fought to end slavery.

"I'm so sick of that damn word slavery," she said.

South Carolina began flying the flag over the dome of the Capitol in Columbia in 1961 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the war. But instead of removing it after the anniversary passed, the white politicians who ran the state kept flying it in defiance of the Civil Rights struggle that was underway.

In 2000, it was removed from the dome and moved to the grounds as part of a compromise reached with Democratic black lawmakers.

But the struggle to banish it altogether continued.

Then in June 2015 an avowed racist named Dylann Roof murdered nine worshippers at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina and the drive to remove the flag got the support from politicians who had previously opposed such a move, like then-Gov. Nikki Haley.

And the next month, the flag was finally lowered and dispatched to the nearby Confederate Relic Room and Museum.

Asked for comment about the flag raising, the South Carolina Department of Administration said in a statement that the South Carolina Secessionist Party "followed the appropriate process for reserving a section of the grounds to hold an event." It noted that while groups are allowed to display flags they "cannot be left unattended and cannot be maintained by staking items into the ground."

"The South Carolina Secessionist Party or any other private group is not permitted to fly the Confederate Flag or any other flag over the State House or from a state flagpole," the statement read.

And it must be removed by 5 p.m.

Historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage at the University of North Carolina said Southerners have "long nurtured this sense of the Confederate tradition being under threat" and many view the removal of their flag as proof that their worst fears were coming true.

"The Charleston church massacre intensified the rhetoric about removing Confederate symbols from public spaces," he said. "After the Dylann Roof shooting, it went from, 'Why are they still flying the flag?' to 'Why are there still so many Confederate monuments on our landscape?'"

Kevin Levin, another expert on the Civil War, agreed that "Roof is commonly cited as a catalyst" for removing the Confederate flag. But he said the removal of other Confederate symbols from public spaces has gained steam as African-Americans gained more political power.

"Once you have more African-Americans on city councils, elected as mayors, you have a change in the conversation about how history is remembered," he said.

As for critics who say removing these statues is tampering with history, Levin said, "Few Americans would question the decision by the Poles or the Czechs to remove statues of Lenin or Soviet soldiers from their territory."

In addition to New Orleans, the other cities seeking to mothball monuments to the Confederacy include Baltimore and Charlottesville, Virginia, where a couple dozen KKK members protesting the planned removal of a General Robert E. Lee statue got an earful over the weekend from ten times as many counter-protesters.

In Richmond, Virginia, the city's African-American mayor, Levar Stoney, has created a commission to help find a way of placing the memorials to Davis and Lee on Monument Avenue in the proper historical context rather than truck them away.

In Norfolk, Virginia, a memorial to the Confederate war dead was vandalized by somebody who spray painted the word "Shame." And in Tampa, Florida, the bid to remove the 106-year-old Confederate monument outside the old courthouse was stymied last month when the Republican-led Hillsborough County Commission voted 4-3 to keep it there.

There is now a move afoot to move the statue to a historic Tampa cemetery.

Meanwhile, Alabama went in the opposite direction. The governor in May signed a law that provides sweeping protections for Confederate monuments and other memorials.

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Confederate flag rises at South Carolina Statehouse in protest by Secessionist Party

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The Confederate battle flag was raised outside the South Carolina Statehouse again Monday, but it rose on a pole that was planted in a temporary plastic stand - not in the earth.

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

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http://www.collegiatetimes.com/opinion/a-dark-piece-of-history-confederate-battle-flag-symbolizes-racism/article_ba11033a-22d7-11e7-a9aa-b3959dda0c33.html

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http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-the-confederate-flag-racist

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Jayden Howard - The Confederate Flag is /Good/

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Jayden Howard - The Confederate Flag is /Good/

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred
and
https://www.rd.com/culture/confederate-flag-facts/
also here's this
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/8-things-didnt-know-confederate-flag

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culturally-speaking/201507/the-confederate-flag-heritage-or-hate

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jhttps://insertlearning.com/v1/share/zczsrrzj

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http://www.historynet.com/confederate-flag

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http://www.usflag.org/confederate.stars.and.bars.html

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http://time.com/4795124/civil-war-museum-confederate-flag-closes/

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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

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Article on whether the confederate flag is heritage or hate

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Article on whether the confederate flag is heritage or hate

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culturally-speaking/201507/the-confederate-flag-heritage-or-hate

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Like many Southern boys, I grew up with two flags hanging in my room - an American flag and a Confederate battle flag. The American flag was enormous, taking up much of one wall. It was the "1776" flag, with 13 stars in a circle in the field of blue. My grandmother bought it for me on the bicentennial, and for years it was a treasured possession. The flag took on a special meaning later in life, when I learned more of a family history that included service with General Washington, suffering at Valley Forge.

The Confederate battle flag was much smaller, and it hung over my bookshelf. We bought it at the Shiloh battlefield in Tennessee, where one of my Confederate ancestors fought and where Albert Sidney Johnston died - the general that many considered the great hope of the Confederate Army in the West. My Confederate forefathers went on to fight at Vicksburg, at the battles of Franklin and Nashville, and in countless skirmishes across Tennessee and Mississippi. I grew up looking at old family pictures, including men who still wore their Confederate uniform for formal portraits - long after the war had ended.

Like many Southern families', my family's military story didn't end with the Civil War - it continued on to World War I, the European theater in World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then to my own recent deployment during the Surge in Iraq. The martial history of our family is inseparable from the family story, and it includes men in gray.

So I've followed this most recent round of debate over the Confederate battle flag with perhaps greater than normal interest. In the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, there is always a demand to "do something." Always, that demand involves gun control - typically, gun-control measures that wouldn't have actually stopped the shooting in question. But often there's something more. In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, the Left demanded "civility" - despite zero evidence that the barking-mad perpetrator was motivated by any form of political discourse. Now the demand is to remove the Confederate battle flag from a Confederate memorial in South Carolina (and presumably elsewhere). The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, with characteristic vehemence, says, " Take down the flag. Take it down now." His call - and others - have resonated around the web.

If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we'd take down that flag. But that's of course not the goal.

There's a disturbing habit on the Left of trying to find the position that renders one especially virtuous in their identity politics culture - regardless of its real-world impact - and then sneering from that high ground at all who dissent. But that's certainly not everyone's motive, and it's certainly not the motive of those calling for the flag's removal at National Review . It's simply undeniable that the Confederate battle flag is a painful symbol to our African-American fellow citizens, especially given its recent history as a chosen totem of segregationists. So it's critical to respond to the argument in good faith. And just as the history of the Civil War is personal to me, so is America's present racial reality. As I've mentioned before, my youngest daughter is quite literally African-American (born in Ethiopia and now as American as apple pie), and when she's a little bit older, we'll no doubt have many tough conversations about history and race.

If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we'd take down that flag. But that's of course not the goal. Rather, we use history to understand our nation in all its complexity - acknowledging uncomfortable realities and learning difficult truths. For white southerners - especially those with deep roots in the South - those difficult truths are presented front and center throughout our lives. Yes, the South seceded in large part to preserve slavery. Yes, had the South prevailed, slavery not only would have been preserved for the indefinite future, it may have even spread to new nations and territories. And no, while some southerners were kinder than others, there was nothing "humane" about the fundamental institution of slavery itself. As Coates and others have often and eloquently explained, it was a system built on plunder and pain.

But there are other difficult truths. Among them, when the war began, it was not explicitly a war to end slavery. Indeed, had the Union quickly accomplished its war aims, slavery would have endured, at least for a time. When hundreds of thousands of southern men took up arms (most of them non-slave-owning), many of them fought with the explicit belief that they were standing in the shoes of the Founding Fathers, men who'd exercised their own right of self-determination to separate from the mother Country. Others simply saw an invading army marching into their state - into their towns and across their farms - and chose to resist.

And no one can doubt their valor. Both sides displayed breathtaking courage, but the South poured itself into the fight to an extent the modern American mind simply can't comprehend. If you extrapolated Southern losses into our current American population, the war would cost the lives of a staggering 9 million men, with at least an equivalent number injured. To understand the impact of that human loss, I'd urge you to read Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust's Republic of Suffering - a book that explores the psychological impact of omnipresent, mass-scale death on southern culture.

Those men fought against a larger, better-supplied force, yet - under some of history's more brilliant military commanders - were arguably a few better-timed attacks away from prevailing in America's deadliest conflict. Then, the defeated survivors came home to the consequences of total war. Large sections of the South were simply devastated - crops burned, homes burned, and livestock slaughtered or scattered. Entire cities lay in ruin.

Flying it as a symbol of white racial supremacy is undeniably vile, and any official use of the flag for that purpose should end, immediately. Flying it over monuments to Confederate war dead is simply history.

The South had to rebuild - under military occupation - and it had to rebuild more than just its physical infrastructure. It had to reimagine itself. It ultimately did so for good and ill. The worst of that new South was obvious: the gradually tightening grip of a new and different era of racial oppression, one that culminated in Jim Crow, lynching, and systematic segregation. This is the side of history that is now taught clearly and unflinchingly - and should be taught. But that wasn't the whole story, not by any means. The region also rebuilt by honoring its war dead and extolling a culture of military valor. Through this reverence for valor, the defeated South, ironically enough, soon supplied the newly reunified nation with many of its greatest warriors - men who were indispensable in preserving our democracy against the existential threats of fascism and communism. To this day, the South supplies more than its fair share of soldiers, men and women who lay down their lives to protect us from the deadly threat of jihad.

It is telling that the South's chosen, enduring symbol of the Confederacy wasn't the flag of the Confederate States of America - the slave state itself - but the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee's army. Lee was the reluctant Confederate, the brilliant commander, the man who called slavery a "moral and political evil," and the architect - by his example - of much of the reconciliation between North and South. His virtue grew in the retelling - and modern historians still argue about his true character - but the symbolism was clear. If the South was to rebuild, it would rebuild under Lee's banner.

Since that time, the battle flag has grown to mean many things, including evil things. Flying it as a symbol of white racial supremacy is undeniably vile, and any official use of the flag for that purpose should end, immediately. Flying it over monuments to Confederate war dead is simply history. States should no more remove a Confederate battle flag from a Confederate memorial than they should chisel away the words on the granite or bulldoze the memorials themselves.

I no longer have a battle flag at my house. The American flag flies proudly from (by far) the tallest flagpole in the neighborhood - a gift from my father-in-law, raised when I was deployed. But we have a room in our home that honors my family's history of service. On one side of a framed picture from my own time in Iraq is a painting from the Revolutionary War, on the other side is a picture tracing the history of the Confederate Army in the Civil War. It's all a part of the complicated, messy picture of who I am - of who we are. Removing the Confederate flag from Confederate memorials doesn't change that history, it merely helps shroud it in ignorance. The flag should stay.

- David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review , and a veteran of the Iraq War.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Don't Tear Down the Confederate Battle Flag

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Like many Southern boys, I grew up with two flags hanging in my room - an American flag and a Confederate battle flag. The American flag was enormous, taking up much of one wall. It was the "1776" flag, with 13 stars in a circle in the field of blue.

# data[].attributes.body
https://thetylt.com/culture/confederate-flag-racism-southern-heritage-hate

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/confederate-flag-furor/house-would-ban-confederate-flags-va-cemetery-flagpoles-n576906

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https://thetylt.com/culture/confederate-flag-racism-southern-heritage-hate

# data[].attributes.headline
The Confederate Flag Is a Matter of Pride and Heritage, Not Hatred .

# data[].attributes.subject
The Confederate Flag Is a Matter of Pride and Heritage, Not Hatred .

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/...confederate-flag.../the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pri...

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.headline
Pride,not prejudice (title of the article)

# data[].attributes.subject
Pride,not prejudice (title of the article)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you drive in either direction on 460 from Blacksburg, Virginia, you are bound to come across dozens of proudly flown Confederate battle flags. As humans, we best understand the world around us by categorizing things in distinct ways. We have a tendency to mark something as either incredibly racist or a symbol of regional pride, disregarding the fact that different people raise that flag for different reasons.

The Confederate battle flag is explicitly a symbol of the South in the United States. And to get at the core of what it should mean as a symbol, you have to understand the different issues at play during the Civil War. Different schools teach different lessons when it comes to explaining the Civil War's causes.

The Civil War was primarily caused by the South's support of slavery, and the North and the federal government's opposition to slavery for moral reasons. What many people who are not from the South forget though is how much the South depended on slavery for its economic security. To abolish slavery, immediately and completely, would have placed the South in financial ruin. And it was beginning to think that it was losing all control over how slavery was addressed.

Yes, the war was about slavery, but it was also about self-governance and the nature of government. It was about being able to control what happens to you and asserting the right to decide how you are governed. I understand this sounds hypocritical and backward since, in the name of democracy, these men were fighting, in part, for their right to limit completely the freedom of slaves.

Although, as opposing columnists have pointed out, the flying of the Confederate battle flag seemed to lose connection to the actual Civil War, and wasn't seen again for almost a century.

From my experience with people who fly or wear the Confederate battle flag, many of them are not aware of its use as a tool for antagonization and prejudice during the Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps if more people were aware of this history, they would be less inclined to display the flag. Unfortunately, when we disagree with one another, we too often do not focus on enlightening or understanding others, but instead on shaming and separating ourselves from them.

There have been so many issues in American politics in which we, in the process of trying to prove that one side is right or wrong, have further divided our nation without care for the consequences.

The issue many people face with the bearing of the Confederate battle flag is that it is racist in and of itself. To many, and some would argue a majority of the people, who fly this flag or otherwise display it, it is a symbol of southern pride.

Everyone I have known who displays the Confederate battle flag has said they fly it for heritage, to show that they are proud to live in the South and proud to live out in the country. The flag might mean something horrible to others, but why is it so difficult to believe that it means something entirely different to people whose families have a history in the South or who are proud to live here?

It seems shortsighted and noncommittal to cast out every person who displays a Confederate battle flag as racist. Because the flag is, hopefully, not the primary problem here. The primary problem, the actual cause of this whole argument, is that we must eradicate racism in this country.

I'll agree with my opposition in that not publicly displaying a flag that some consider to be a symbol of white supremacy or racism is a good place to start, but fighting the flying of the Confederate flag is not essential to fighting racism because the people who fly it are not inevitably racist.

I come from a suburban town in central Virginia, where dozens of people in my high school class either wore or adorned their vehicles with the Confederate battle flag. It would be wrong of me to assume that just because those people adorned a symbol that some interpret as racist, that they must be racist themselves. Because isn't part of fighting racism about fighting stereotypes? Isn't it about changing the way people treat others and the way they understand them?

It is important to understand the history of symbols and to be sensitive to what your words and actions might mean to other people, but we must be conscientious of all viewpoints, not just our own. And we must respond to others' opinions not with disgust or condemnation, but with a willingness to learn, teach and compromise.

Crossfire: A dark piece of history: Confederate battle flag symbolizes racism, hatred

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pride, not prejudice: Confederate battle flag an emblem of southern heritage, culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you drive in either direction on 460 from Blacksburg, Virginia, you are bound to come across dozens of proudly flown Confederate battle flags. As humans, we best understand the world around us by categorizing things in distinct ways.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Like many Southern boys, I grew up with two flags hanging in my room - an American flag and a Confederate battle flag. The American flag was enormous, taking up much of one wall. It was the "1776" flag, with 13 stars in a circle in the field of blue. My grandmother bought it for me on the bicentennial, and for years it was a treasured possession. The flag took on a special meaning later in life, when I learned more of a family history that included service with General Washington, suffering at Valley Forge.

The Confederate battle flag was much smaller, and it hung over my bookshelf. We bought it at the Shiloh battlefield in Tennessee, where one of my Confederate ancestors fought and where Albert Sidney Johnston died - the general that many considered the great hope of the Confederate Army in the West. My Confederate forefathers went on to fight at Vicksburg, at the battles of Franklin and Nashville, and in countless skirmishes across Tennessee and Mississippi. I grew up looking at old family pictures, including men who still wore their Confederate uniform for formal portraits - long after the war had ended.

Like many Southern families', my family's military story didn't end with the Civil War - it continued on to World War I, the European theater in World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then to my own recent deployment during the Surge in Iraq. The martial history of our family is inseparable from the family story, and it includes men in gray.

So I've followed this most recent round of debate over the Confederate battle flag with perhaps greater than normal interest. In the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, there is always a demand to "do something." Always, that demand involves gun control - typically, gun-control measures that wouldn't have actually stopped the shooting in question. But often there's something more. In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, the Left demanded "civility" - despite zero evidence that the barking-mad perpetrator was motivated by any form of political discourse. Now the demand is to remove the Confederate battle flag from a Confederate memorial in South Carolina (and presumably elsewhere). The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, with characteristic vehemence, says, " Take down the flag. Take it down now." His call - and others - have resonated around the web.

If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we'd take down that flag. But that's of course not the goal.

There's a disturbing habit on the Left of trying to find the position that renders one especially virtuous in their identity politics culture - regardless of its real-world impact - and then sneering from that high ground at all who dissent. But that's certainly not everyone's motive, and it's certainly not the motive of those calling for the flag's removal at National Review . It's simply undeniable that the Confederate battle flag is a painful symbol to our African-American fellow citizens, especially given its recent history as a chosen totem of segregationists. So it's critical to respond to the argument in good faith. And just as the history of the Civil War is personal to me, so is America's present racial reality. As I've mentioned before, my youngest daughter is quite literally African-American (born in Ethiopia and now as American as apple pie), and when she's a little bit older, we'll no doubt have many tough conversations about history and race.

If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we'd take down that flag. But that's of course not the goal. Rather, we use history to understand our nation in all its complexity - acknowledging uncomfortable realities and learning difficult truths. For white southerners - especially those with deep roots in the South - those difficult truths are presented front and center throughout our lives. Yes, the South seceded in large part to preserve slavery. Yes, had the South prevailed, slavery not only would have been preserved for the indefinite future, it may have even spread to new nations and territories. And no, while some southerners were kinder than others, there was nothing "humane" about the fundamental institution of slavery itself. As Coates and others have often and eloquently explained, it was a system built on plunder and pain.

But there are other difficult truths. Among them, when the war began, it was not explicitly a war to end slavery. Indeed, had the Union quickly accomplished its war aims, slavery would have endured, at least for a time. When hundreds of thousands of southern men took up arms (most of them non-slave-owning), many of them fought with the explicit belief that they were standing in the shoes of the Founding Fathers, men who'd exercised their own right of self-determination to separate from the mother Country. Others simply saw an invading army marching into their state - into their towns and across their farms - and chose to resist.

And no one can doubt their valor. Both sides displayed breathtaking courage, but the South poured itself into the fight to an extent the modern American mind simply can't comprehend. If you extrapolated Southern losses into our current American population, the war would cost the lives of a staggering 9 million men, with at least an equivalent number injured. To understand the impact of that human loss, I'd urge you to read Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust's Republic of Suffering - a book that explores the psychological impact of omnipresent, mass-scale death on southern culture.

Those men fought against a larger, better-supplied force, yet - under some of history's more brilliant military commanders - were arguably a few better-timed attacks away from prevailing in America's deadliest conflict. Then, the defeated survivors came home to the consequences of total war. Large sections of the South were simply devastated - crops burned, homes burned, and livestock slaughtered or scattered. Entire cities lay in ruin.

Flying it as a symbol of white racial supremacy is undeniably vile, and any official use of the flag for that purpose should end, immediately. Flying it over monuments to Confederate war dead is simply history.

The South had to rebuild - under military occupation - and it had to rebuild more than just its physical infrastructure. It had to reimagine itself. It ultimately did so for good and ill. The worst of that new South was obvious: the gradually tightening grip of a new and different era of racial oppression, one that culminated in Jim Crow, lynching, and systematic segregation. This is the side of history that is now taught clearly and unflinchingly - and should be taught. But that wasn't the whole story, not by any means. The region also rebuilt by honoring its war dead and extolling a culture of military valor. Through this reverence for valor, the defeated South, ironically enough, soon supplied the newly reunified nation with many of its greatest warriors - men who were indispensable in preserving our democracy against the existential threats of fascism and communism. To this day, the South supplies more than its fair share of soldiers, men and women who lay down their lives to protect us from the deadly threat of jihad.

It is telling that the South's chosen, enduring symbol of the Confederacy wasn't the flag of the Confederate States of America - the slave state itself - but the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee's army. Lee was the reluctant Confederate, the brilliant commander, the man who called slavery a "moral and political evil," and the architect - by his example - of much of the reconciliation between North and South. His virtue grew in the retelling - and modern historians still argue about his true character - but the symbolism was clear. If the South was to rebuild, it would rebuild under Lee's banner.

Since that time, the battle flag has grown to mean many things, including evil things. Flying it as a symbol of white racial supremacy is undeniably vile, and any official use of the flag for that purpose should end, immediately. Flying it over monuments to Confederate war dead is simply history. States should no more remove a Confederate battle flag from a Confederate memorial than they should chisel away the words on the granite or bulldoze the memorials themselves.

I no longer have a battle flag at my house. The American flag flies proudly from (by far) the tallest flagpole in the neighborhood - a gift from my father-in-law, raised when I was deployed. But we have a room in our home that honors my family's history of service. On one side of a framed picture from my own time in Iraq is a painting from the Revolutionary War, on the other side is a picture tracing the history of the Confederate Army in the Civil War. It's all a part of the complicated, messy picture of who I am - of who we are. Removing the Confederate flag from Confederate memorials doesn't change that history, it merely helps shroud it in ignorance. The flag should stay.

- David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review , and a veteran of the Iraq War.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Don't Tear Down the Confederate Battle Flag

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Like many Southern boys, I grew up with two flags hanging in my room - an American flag and a Confederate battle flag. The American flag was enormous, taking up much of one wall. It was the "1776" flag, with 13 stars in a circle in the field of blue.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://thetylt.com/culture/confederate-flag-racism-southern-heritage-hate

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This summer was marked by public debates about Confederate monuments. But there's another debate going on about the Confederate battle flag. What message does that flags send these days, especially when it's on display in the North? North Country Public Radio's Zach Hirsch asked his neighbors in Plattsburgh, N.Y., a city near the Canadian border, why they embrace the controversial symbol?

ZACH HIRSCH, BYLINE: The Confederate battle flag in my neighbor's window made me curious. Then one day, the flag was gone, and that made me even more curious. Maybe they had second thoughts.

RICKY BARBER: Hi. My name's Ricky Barber. I'm from Plattsburgh, N.Y.

HIRSCH: So I decided to knock on his door and ask.

BARBER: I'm originally from Hazlehurst, Ga.

HIRSCH: Ricky Barber is 28 years old. He's worked in warehouses and auto mechanic shops, but he's out of work right now. He says he had the flag in the window because he needed a curtain. And he took it down only because he's moving not because he thought he'd offend someone, he says. Now it's hanging at his fiancee Becca Lee's house across town on the bedroom wall. Lee is 30, and she's from Kansas.

BECCA LEE: We are not a racist couple, and we own the flag.

HIRSCH: She has a lot of family in the South and describes herself as a Southern belle.

LEE: I don't judge people. I don't care what color skin they are. If they need defending, I'm going to do them. That's what a Southern belle does.

HIRSCH: We talk in Lee's backyard. People are grilling, and some kids are playing nearby. One of the kids happens to be black. Barber and Lee say they're not hateful people. Barber says everybody should have equal rights no matter what color their skin is. We all bleed red.

BARBER: Technically, everybody is the same race. Some people have darker pigment-ism to the skin. Some people don't.

HIRSCH: But the way he talks about race, many would find it insulting.

BARBER: I don't care who you are. You can be blacker than the ace of spades. I mean, you're going to bleed red no matter what.

HIRSCH: As we talk, they paint an unrealistic picture of the experience of people of color in America. Lee believes it's sometimes OK for white people to use the N-word. Barber doesn't accept the idea that black people are at a disadvantage in the criminal justice system.

BARBER: Equal rights is out there for everybody. But it all depends on what you do to end up in prison or in jail. It's life choices that put you there.

HIRSCH: I think we might agree to disagree on that one because I...

On average, black people are incarcerated in state prisons at a rate that's more than five times the rate of whites. And in certain states, that ratio is more than 10 to 1. That's according to a study from the Sentencing Project, a nonpartisan group that advocates for prison reform. It's one of a catalog of studies showing that African-Americans are not treated the same as whites in the U.S.

BARBER: That's actually not true because I see more white people that get arrested for drugs than black people. So I don't see how somebody's going to sit there and say that, you know, a black man gets more prison time.

HIRSCH: Northern New York is mostly white and rural. So it makes sense that someone living here might know more white people who were arrested. But Barber believes skin color just isn't a factor here or anywhere in the U.S. Our conversation goes on like this. A lot of phrases and ideas that make many Americans uncomfortable or angry just don't bother Barber and Lee. The same goes for the Confederate flag they fly. Barber says he knows the South was fighting for slavery in the Civil War, but that's not why he flies the flag.

BARBER: It's because of my heritage, where I come from not because, you know, I'm are racist or because, you know, I don't like black people. That's not the case. I have black family. I have black friends.

HIRSCH: Barber also says it's how he honors the Southern soldiers who died in the Civil War. But political scientists and historians say it mostly disappeared right after the Civil War and came back almost a century later as a symbol of racism, even violence. It was embraced by the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights movement. Barber and Lee say all that modern history is in the past. They say the Confederate flag is now just the flag of the South. But they also say it's becoming something else.

BARBER: You'll hear all these people, you know, that gathered down in the South that are blacks. What about their Black Lives Matter flags and stuff like that? That's pushing back on the white people. Us. white people, you know, we retaliate by, hey, we got the Confederate flag and what not, you know?

HIRSCH: So is that retaliation against...

BARBER: It's not, you know, retaliation exactly. It's more of, look. This is, you know, our flag. This is what we stand for. You guys had the Black Lives Matter flags. That's what you guys stand for.

HIRSCH: Suddenly, the conversation gets even more complicated.

BARBER: Can you come here for a second, please?

HIRSCH: He calls over the African-American child who's playing nearby.

BARBER: Are you opposed to the Confederate flag at all? Do you have a problem with that flag, as a black person?

HIRSCH: We can't use the 13-year-old's voice because we don't have parental permission. The teen looks uncomfortable. Barber and Lee keep pushing for an answer. And there's a long pause. Then the teenager tells them that the Confederate flag is flown by people who want to have slavery happen again in America. This isn't coming from the media or an historian or a liberal professor but from a child who's playing right here in their neighborhood. The four of us stand there awkwardly. Barber and Lee seemed stunned.

HIRSCH: Doesn't that make you reconsider, you know, what it means.

LEE: We would just have to have a long talk explaining why we do it ourselves. Have I ever disrespected you in any way to show that I was racist?

HIRSCH: The teen says no. And Lee gets back to her argument.

LEE: To me, it's a Southern flag. And we grown to not be a racist type. And that's why I hang up the flag, is to show what the flag was in the past. And now we get to bring that to our children saying, hey, this is what the flag meant back in the day. Now this is what it means now to us.

HIRSCH: We talk a while longer about Charlottesville, Va., about Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who photographed himself with the battle flag before murdering nine black people in a church. They both say they'd take it down temporarily if they were afraid of offending company or neighbors. But at the end of the day, they're going to keep flying the Confederate flag. For NPR News, I'm Zach Hirsch in Plattsburgh, N.Y.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why A Confederate Flag Flies In Upstate New York

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SCOTT SIMON, HOST: This summer was marked by public debates about Confederate monuments. But there's another debate going on about the Confederate battle flag. What message does that flags send these days, especially when it's on display in the North?

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/magazine/the-souths-heritage-is-so-much-more-than-a-flag.html

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://splinternews.com/man-says-the-confederate-flag-isnt-a-symbol-of-racism-1798396659

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred

# data[].attributes.body
https://thetylt.com/culture/confederate-flag-racism-southern-heritage-hate

# data[].attributes.body
1. https://thetylt.com/culture/confederate-flag-racism-southern-heritage-hate
2. https://bangordailynews.com/2017/08/16/opinion/the-confederate-battle-flag-isnt-a-symbol-of-southern-heritage-its-a-flag-of-treason/
Both of these state facts about the flag and a little about both the supporting and unsupporting sides. The second one has more of an opinion that the author supports when the first one talks more about the two sides.

# data[].attributes.body
I believe it’s not the flag only standing for southern racism it’s only associated with that it’s because of what many people who wore the flag did to make it seem like a huge form of racism.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/confederate-symbols-racist-or-southern-heritage/article_97384ee8-c240-5d65-b0f4-b6f590f097de.html

# data[].attributes.body
https://thetylt.com/culture/confederate-flag-racism-southern-heritage-hate

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/us/confederate-flag-civil-war.html

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.southerncultures.org/article/confederate-battle-flag-symbol-southern-heritage-identity/

# data[].attributes.body
time.com/tag/confederate-flag/

# data[].attributes.body
the confederate flag is just a way to express southern pride not being hateful or racist. Although that southerners back when that supported the southern flag had slaves and owned them does not mean that this flag is racist today.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.historynet.com/embattled-banner-the-convoluted-history-of-the-confederate-flag.htm

# data[].attributes.body
I've posted the first example. Although this is part of the Opinion page (which means anyone can write in), the author's credentials give him some authority on the matter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Confederate Flag Is a Matter of Pride and Heritage, Not Hatred

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some racists display the Confederate battle flag, as well as the Christian cross and the American flag. Should these symbols be seen as racist too?