Ugh! THAT flag!!!!

Here is my personal update to start. I have continued with my daily fitness challenges and have done well keeping up with it but I wont lie, there are days I just want to do nothing. Problem there is I have spent too much time in the past doing absolutely nothing and that is how I got in the situation I am in. I feel great and I am loving ( and a little hating) starting to build my distance running. I had forgotten how much praying time I get when I walk or run , of course the prayer is usually something along the lines of “please help me get to that light pole so I can stop” but prayer none the less. I’m still struggling with my nutrition  but I can proudly say I havent had a Diet Coke ( my weakness) in almost three weeks!!!  So this journey continues and I will strive to be a better version of myself each day. Which leads me to my topic for this blog. Before I get into the meat of this I want to be clear that all of my blog entries have been and will continue to be topic that I have been led, inspired, motivated or simply guided to write and every word is from the heart. There is very little about my personality that enjoys controversy but over the last several weeks I have felt led to write about this controversy surrounding the Confederate Flag. There, I said it. No turning back now!

I was raised in a small town in North Carolina. I went to schools that were honestly 50/50 black and white. Let me say now that if you prefer African-American that is fine and I absolutely mean no disrespect I simply am choosing to use the term black in the same way I’m choosing to reference others as white and not use the term Caucasian.  So my point is that I have lived in the south my entire life and have experienced the south the only way I could, as a white girl.

I want to tell you what the Confederate Flag represented to ME as I was growing up in a small southern town. It represented days at the beach with my fiends, it was Lynyrd Skynyrd and Sweet Home  Alabama. It was a BIG part of history and why we would never live anywhere north of Richmond Va. I wasnt raised to worship the  flag by any means I simply knew it was something to keep in the back of your head to be “proud” of. Like I was “proud” to be an Eagle at my high school or a Wake Forest Demon Deacon fan . Yes, I am a Wake Forest fan and no I didn’t go there but my Daddy did and it was a natural fan base and of course I could never pull for that other team that rhymes with “angina”. Cause I was raised right (wink, wink). I digress! So, my point being that the Confederate flag , the one with the big X with the stars , (yes, I know  there is more than one flag of the Confederacy to please my history buffs) , it was a back drop ( not literally) to my southern heritage and it didn’t mean hate or oppression to me it was simply what made the south my home.

So, now I’m bout to make some folks uncomfortable. THAT flag. The one I didn’t think much about but knew it was about my heritage well it stood for something totally different for my black friends that I grew up with. As I got older I slowly began to realize there was some divide between my black friends and my white friends. Let me say that I wasnt raised with any sense of being better than anyone. My parents have always treated all people with respect and kindness so I was taught by example. With that said this invisible “division” among my friends was disturbing to me but as a child I just didn’t understand. As I grew up and developed a better understanding and yes some of that came from history class. I’m a strong believer that the only way to prevent history from repeating itself is to understand where we came from.  So I was being educated but still had a lot to learn. Anyone who knows me knows I like to talk, a lot! So I started having conversations with ALL of my friends and I started observing people. Here is the point I am tap dancing around. For me the flag stood for Southern “pride” for my

Southern black friends it was and is a symbol of hate. It conjures up memories and family stories of inequality and violence and family members being beaten to death because their SKIN COLOR is darker than white people ( who also come in all shades). It is not being allowed to urinate in a clean bathroom  and having to sit BEHIND someone who is MORE IMPORTANT than them on a stupid bus! It is subtle comments like ” how did you get into that college???” as if their human brains couldn’t have possibly just been smart enough to earn admission to a university. It stands for being looked over for a job because the name on their resume sounds ” too black ” or because we white folks are too freaking lazy to learn how to pronounce a name other than John or Ashley. It is horrible racist jokes that some jerk who doesn’t THINK is offensive tells and the punch line sends a knife into someones heart because it is yet another reminder that an entire race of people  have been considered to be less than. It stands for a Cross ,the very sign of peace and all accepting LOVE, burning in a yard to remind someone  God doesn’t really love them. UGH!!! This is BS!!! Yall , I live in a county that until the 90’s  ( yes the 1990’s) had a billboard, on a public highway, that read “home of the KKK”. Wow, so the flag is history from 150 years ago???  Really?  Not at all!  Yes, it was a symbol of war and the South’s fight with the North but it was adopted by a group of white supremacists and made into a symbol of hate and oppression. Why would ANYONE be comfortable going to their state’s capital where that same symbol of hate, the reminder  of their struggle was allowed to fly as a symbol of pride???? It would be the same if a giant Swastika was allowed to  fly at the capital building. HOW does that fairly represent all the people of a state?

This stuff is hard to talk about but talking is exactly what we need to do. When I say talk I mean calmly expressing our feelings and then LISTENING to someone elses side of it. Yall, we have got to get this right! I DO NOT want my children to grow up with the same unspoken tension with their friends whose skin is browner or whiter than theirs!!!

So here is what I plan to do. Yes, it starts with me just like it starts with YOU! I’m choosing to be open to conversation and listen to what someone else thinks and feels. I am not open however to yelling and racist NOISE. Keep in mind NOISE is just that. It is an irritant and eventually goes away. But open conversation leads to understanding and hopefully down the road to peace and friendships and commonality. I bet a lot of us (black, white and  brown) have some similar stories of our granny’s cooking and catching lighting bugs as kids and chasing after the ice cream truck, hating school and loving summer break. There is so much more we have in common that we can build on.

So… the other thing I am doing is thinking of all the symbols of the South that ( to my knowledge) do not represent any level of hate or division. It’s lightning bugs, sweet tea, tomato sandwiches ( I’m not going to address the brand of mayo here), its Fall football, taking a banana pudding to the house when someone is born or dies. It’s peaches in the summer and no school because they said it might snow. It’s fried chicken and hydrangeas, it’s talkin slow and it’s Y’ALL (yep also know as ALL YALL). It’s the Pineapple ( a sign of hospitality) , a Coke , a RC cola and a moon pie, it’s Dairy Queen and boiled peanuts, it’s BBQ ( not discussing vinegar based vs all the others) and hush puppies. Yall there is so much more to our Southern culture and heritage that is wonderful and significant. Lets not keep our focus on this flag for long. Let’s live in this place of pine trees and spanish moss, mama’s garden , March Madness and family reunions with knowledge of our past but in unity and with pride that we can turn one syllable words into three and we can still be pleasant when it is hot as Hades. Don’t forget the past , acknowledge there was in fact a civil war , that the South lost and allow the flag to be placed in our museums so we do remember our history but please move on and allow peace to enter your lives. Beside, we all got bigger fish to fry!!