The battle flag and a baffling allegiance to ‘Southern heritage’

BY STEVE DOARES

... I am a sixth-generation North Carolinian with several ancestors who fought for the Confederacy as N.C. troops – names like McRae, Humphrey and a great-grandfather and great-great-uncle with my last name. One of these Doareses was captured when Fort Fisher fell and spent the remainder of the war in prison in Elmira, N.Y.

The defense of the battle flag symbol frankly baffles me. I heard a public radio story set in a tourist shop in Charleston, not far from Emmanuel AME Church. The shop carries flag-emblazoned trinkets. One customer being interviewed was a college student from our fair state. The poor fellow was conflicted, bless his heart – he recognizes the flag is an offensive symbol to many, but, by golly, to him it meant his heritage.

This theme gets repeated frequently by folks in the South – it’s my Southern heritage, which I’m proud of. The odd thing is, it’s always white folks who use this phraseology. I don’t know how to process this. What do they mean by “Southern heritage”? Proud that their family was the privileged race in a society where all humans were not regarded the same? This is the 21st century. A focus on “Southern heritage” looks oddly provincial in our multicultural state, in our interconnected world.

Even more baffling to me: “It’s a symbol of what my honorable Confederate veteran ancestors fought for.” Their and my ancestors were enlisted men in an effort to break apart a nation that had been founded less than a century before, the major factor (despite what we Southerners were taught in history class) being preservation of the right to keep other humans enslaved. I believe one word for that is treason. Something to be proud of? I can, with equal legitimacy, claim to be ashamed of it ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article25616029.html