The ‘Confederate’ Flag

For a flag that wasn’t even the official flag for a nation that lost a war over 150 years ago, the “Southern Cross” flag sure gets a lot of media attention.

Please note, no matter what you want to call it, the flag (you know the one I mean) was never the flag of the Confederate States of America. Its design was submitted, and then rejected, by the CSA leadership. It was eventually adopted by General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as their battle flag (and thus it makes sense that it would adorn the top of the General Lee, the car driven by them Duke Boys in the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard.”), but that was only for a couple of years.

Why is it, then, that this flag is such a topic of debate in 2020? Well, for that, you can thank the film “Birth of a Nation,” which featured the flag prominently in its 1915 release, and the “Dixiecrats,” a group of southern Democrats in the 1940s who adopted the “Dixie Flag” as one of their favorite decorations.

After decades of the flag being more or less a symbol meaning (white) Southern pride, over the past couple of decades, there’s been a push to get rid of it. And while I’ll readily admit to having a Confederate Flag t-shirt and a die-cast General Lee model car and probably some other items with the “Southern Cross” on them as a kid, I never really thought much about it.

But clearly there are those that do. Last week, NASCAR (as Southern as you can get) banned the flag at all future events. Some folks didn’t like that.

But you know what? It’s probably for the best.