What is Southern Heritage? For me, Southern Heritage is pride in and respect for your family. It is grits or nothing for breakfast. It is knowing that Barbeque is a noun. It's sitting in a tree freezing your butt off waiting for supper to walk by. Its country music and NASCAR. For me the Confederate flag has always been around. From those corny license plates that had the fat old soldier saying "Ferget hell!" to the child t-shirts that read "I'm a little rebel", it wasn't racial, it was a statement that said, "I'm country, I'm from the South, and I'm proud." I remember singing "Dixie" in elementary school music class. We didn't fly the Confederate flag every day back then. We saved it for special occasions like holidays, high school football games and NASCAR races. We can't sing Dixie in school any more, and the flag has been banned from high school games. NASCAR will probably start frowning on it too. When you see those flags flying at NASCAR races, they're not being flown by bigots, but by people who are proud to be from the south. Some people think of the Confederate flag as being a symbol of racism, but to me, it has never stood for slavery. When I was a child decades ago, I never associated the flag with slavery. I remember asking my mother what the rebel flag meant. She told me, It means we're not going to let anyone push us around. It was always a symbol of being a rebel, proud, a symbol of the south.
Sounds like Italians to me. Or Greeks.
It is grits or nothing for breakfast.
I like grits for breakfast. But it's an acquired taste.
It is knowing that Barbeque is a noun.
Again, that's fun, and I concur, but it isn't something on which to base a political initiative.
It's sitting in a tree freezing your butt off waiting for supper to walk by.
Some people like hunting. But my family never hunted, just weren't into it.
The most fanatic hunters I've ever known were folks in Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest.
Its country music and NASCAR.
Pretty much most folks in the U.S. like country music. Or stock-car racing for that matter.
For me the Confederate flag has always been around.
It has always been around for me, too, but it never occurred to me that it should be a "sacred" symbol.
From those corny license plates that had the fat old soldier saying "Ferget hell!" to the child t-shirts that read "I'm a little rebel", it wasn't racial, it was a statement that said, "I'm country, I'm from the South, and I'm proud."
Anybody can do that. But I find a symbol of rebellion against the United States of America, which nation I'm a proud citizen, to be an odd way to display that "pride".
I remember singing "Dixie" in elementary school music class. We didn't fly the Confederate flag every day back then.
We sang "Dixie," but we sang "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" and the national anthem, and other patriotic songs. "Dixie" had no special significance to my recollection. It was just a song (we also sang "Alabama, Alabama, We will aye be true to thee" which was about pride in our state).
My point I suppose is that there really isn't anything FUNDAMENTAL that distinguishes someone from the South vs. someone from anywhere else in the country--except that once some of the rich slaveowners thought it would serve their interests to protect their investment in slaves by seceding from the Union. They were rebels against the greatest Nation God ever put upon the earth.
I can be "proud" of many of those other things, but I don't claim rebellion against the United States of America as a part of my "heritage". That was a bunch of people with ideas and "values" that are so far from my own that I can't even begin to think like they do. I'm certainly not going to honor them by flying their flag.