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It’s ridiculous to think of the confederate flag as a racial thing, but I suppose it will always be “an undying symbol of hatred and slavery for the ignorant,” as a historian once said.
It is clear that those who attack the confederate flag as a reminder of slavery are overlooking the most guilty of all reminders of American slavery: the U.S. flag.
After all, from 1641, when Massachusetts first legalized slavery, until 1865, when the confederate struggle for independence ended, slavery was a legal institution in America. The confederate flag flew for a total of 4 years out of those 224. The U.S. flag and it’s colonial predecessors flew over legalized slavery ALL of those 224 years. It was the U.S. flag that the slave first saw, and it was the U.S. flag that flew on the mast of New England slave ships as they brought their human cargo to this country.
To all those who remain undeterred at the end of all that in their quest to stygmatize the principal icon of my personal cultural heritage, I only have this to say to you:
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