That new creation needs to buried, being Southern cannot come to mean inferior in some manner, or racist, being Southern can not be outlawed and erased in some Orwellian fashion.
My opine is that a racial coming together over modern southernness is long overdue. Rednecks come in many colors. Black families in the USA were actually doing better and better in spite of being hobbled from full commerce by Jim Crow. Nobody laments the passing of Jim Crow, but what can be lamented is what GWB called the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Ill thought out (however well intended) welfare schemes rewarded black families for being disunited and the average black family went (pardon the pun) south.
That new creation needs to buried...
Ansel, trust me when I tell you that the negative reaction most blacks have to the Confederate battle flag isn't something new. The roots of that reaction stretch back beyond living memory.
Like most black people, my family has origins in the Deep South. I didn't grow up there, but my parents and grand parents did. For them, that flag was a symbol of fear and oppression that was all too real and ever present in their lives.
In my own time, I've watched as that fear and oppression faded from view. All that remains of it, is a shadowy boogeyman that race baiters use to guilt whites into submission. I can't tell you how many times I've told other blacks that the 'struggle' is over, and that 'we' won a long, long time ago.
That said, up until I was middle aged, the sight of the Confederate battle flag still evoked an involuntary reaction in me. It took a lot of aging, experience, and education for me to overcome it. Today, the sight of that flag is actually comforting to me, believe it or not. Such are the benefits of being a conservative person who seeks to live with the truth.
Alrighty. Just thought I'd add my two cents to that. Thanks.