Confederate Flag

[MaddieM]

(08-13-2015 06:40 PM)L Verge Wrote:  And I agree with Herb agreeing with you 100%!

Your statement that hatred is held in the heart, not in a symbol, is so appropriate. When the news first hit about the church shooting and the photo spread with the young man holding a Confederate flag, all I could think of was, "That flag did not cause this. The world around him, as he perceives it, is what caused him to do such a horrible thing." Someone else asked me why he didn't take his vengeance out in the bad part of town, not on peaceful, God-loving people in their place of worship. All I could think of to answer was, "Cowardice."

I mentioned earlier that I live and work in a predominantly African American county. One of the local newspapers did an article on July 30 that tried very hard to be inflammatory, in my opinion. They took a statement by our black county executive relating to the need to remove offensive reminders of the past and expounded on it by using the Surratt House as an example of a slave-holding family who supported the Confederacy to the extreme. They came very close to blatantly stating that the museum might be an example of something that is offensive and needs to be torn down.

They had done a phone interview with me previously, and I was quoted on the historical aspects of our story as well as a little history on the rise of the Confederate battle flag in prominence during the 1960s - not the 1860s. Luckily, at some point they must have been on tour at the museum and were able to interview several other visitors who were African American and from the community. Both of those visitors praised our museum and also gave their take on what constitutes good history and what constitutes bad history. They expressed the need for everyone to learn about the past, not to destroy it, but to work to overcome the bad.

All I could think of was how much I wish those two could be heard on the evening news. Or, better yet, how good it would be for the instigators and agitators on all sides to read the books of Dr. Ben Carson, a black child who rose from the ghetto projects to become a brilliant neurosurgeon. I am not preaching politics here because I frankly feel that Dr. Carson is too good a person to be in politics of this era, but his views are so much like the American thoughts of old that they make my heart ache with what he's trying to teach us.

So long as people place the onus on a thing, rather than a person, as a means to explain/excuse all that is wrong with this world, we have no chance of changing it. As though banning a flag will make is all better? Could it be that those who shout loudest about the evil of this flag and what it represents are afraid to face up to the fact that evil does, has and always will walk among us? Society is broken in so many ways. We have to exercise personal responsibility as human beings and how we treat each other. We read so many bad things in the media, every day I read the news and often cry over what we do to each other and yet, I still believe that the majority of people are good souls.