It’s All Over Now

Uncle Bubba and I were chatting after dinner one evening when he casually asked, “Have you noticed that everything has changed since they took down the rebel flag from public places?”
I shook my head “No” before realizing that he was being facetiously sarcastic when as he continued.
“Yessir, racism is over.”

Did you know that the flag that everyone has equated to hate is not the confederate flag? Of course not, not if you only listened to “the news”. Hold onto your hat but all of the flap over the rebel flag was wildly inaccurate. The rebel flag here:

is actually a version of the Virginia battle flag. It was used by Robert E. Lee when he realized that the first version of the Confederate flag

was too similar to the American flag and too difficult to discern in the chaos of battle. So he used a square battle flag while fighting the North on the battle fields. A square flag: symbolically, shape is a critical component. What else is there for a flag as a symbol but shape and color?

This is why the rectangular rebel flag is not the Virginia battle flag, though many people equate the rebel flag as representative of the south. At the same time that the battle flag was being utilized, a second Confederate flag was designed.

However this design had a major flaw. When it was hanging limp it often looked like a white flag of surrender. So a vertical red stripe was added to the end of the flag.

But now that the Confederate flag was established, it was futile because the war was coming to an end and as we all know, the Confederacy was defeated by the Union. To the victors go the spoils and the Union’s next actions fated America’s divisiveness. Isn’t that odd being that they were calling themselves the Union? In short, they divided the confiscated properties of the South and in time, fashioned history to reflect greatly on the North.

As Uncle Bubba points out, more rebel flags have been seen since this controversy began, and probably more sold. They are flying on poles in the back of pickup trucks, and hanging off of house and in the front yards of Americans, once free to express whatever they want. In Bubbie’s view, ignorance has been to often confused with racism.