The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: Opinions

ALEX BUSKO

It still strikes me for a moment whenever I see the Stars and Bars flying. It's not that it offends me, a white Southerner, it's that it offends so many millions of other people.

And I'm not saying I perpetually walk on eggshells to avoid offending the sensibilities of all other humans, but for a group of people who so willingly boast of their "hospitality" and "manners," it's kind of ironic that so many Southerners still feel a need to fly the Confederate flag.

My mother's side of the family settled in Virginia well before the Civil War, and three of my own ancestors fought in the Confederate Army. I was born and raised in the South and despite all this - despite all my love for the South and the pride I have in the place I come from - I've never felt compelled to announce this to the world by wearing or waving a Confederate flag.

I always hear people say, "It's about heritage, not hate." But the only problem with this line of reasoning is that so many decades of our Southern heritage revolved around hate.

For more than 100 years, our Southern heritage and the very history of the South were polluted and marred by the way we treated blacks. Generations of my family treated an entire race of human beings like domestic animals - intellectually and genetically inferior things that could basically be bought and put to work.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and other organizations have made it their mission to rewrite the history books.

As a Chicago Tribune article put it earlier this month: "The negative image [of the Confederacy] has long angered some white Southerners, particularly those whose ancestors died in the Civil War. In their view, the war is a source of Southern pride. In recent years, they have sought to redefine the Confederacy in multicultural terms, saying that Jews, Latinos and blacks fought for the South. They argue that the war had little, if anything, to do with slavery."

Historians leap to disagree. And a speech delivered just before the Civil War by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens explicitly says, "African slavery" was the "immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."

Despite the rebranding attempts of the SCV and others, the Confederate States of America weren't a damn melting pot, chock full of "Jews, Latinos and blacks," all shouldering rifles to protect the South. It was a Confederacy composed almost exclusively of white men hell-bent on crippling our Union and preserving their way of life and the reprehensible institution of slavery.

Today, we call groups like that terrorist organizations.

I thought I had ergot poisoning when I read that the Georgia Senate recently passed a bill that will officially make April Georgia's Confederate Heritage and History Month, assuming it's not struck down by the House.

According to the bill, which passed by a ridiculous 48-2 margin, the purpose is "to honor, observe, and celebrate the Confederate States of America, its history, those who served in its armed forces and government, and all those millions of its citizens of various races and ethnic groups and religions who contributed in sundry and myriad ways to the cause which they held so dear…"

Sen. John Bulloch (R-Ochlocknee), one of the bill's sponsors, said the observance would be a boost to the state's tourism.

The bill encourages governments, schools, businesses and citizens to celebrate and participate in programs throughout the month. It's really no different than Black History Month, Bulloch said.

This guy must have stolen a fistful of Rush Limbaugh's OxyContin and washed it down with a bottle of Rebel Yell. In what parallel universe are Confederate history and black history even slightly comparable?

I'm not saying we as Southerners shouldn't honor and celebrate our history and our heritage. The South's history is too important and rich with lessons for us to lose touch with.

But the history of the Confederacy is not the history of the South, and when we celebrate the history of the Confederacy, we celebrate things we should be condemning and praying remain the fossils of our past.

- Alex Busko is a news staff writer for

The Red & Black.

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