Scene setting: In the movie, Matt Walsh heads to the American South to hear what regular folks think of the latest brand of race-obsessed psychobabble infecting our nation. Honestly, the language does feel more Orwellian than NewSpeak itself, and the reactions from ‘rednecks’ are priceless. The takeaway? Southerners, even those who fly the Confederate flag, are less racist than the grifters and hustlers using race to make money and undermine the common bonds of the citizenry. I agree, but this represents a good moment to flesh out the nuance around racism and the flag from my own experience.

I was born and raised in Charleston, SC — where the Civil War kicked off a few years prior. I have an ancestor who fought for the Confederacy. Growing up, I was immersed in Civil War culture — metal detecting for artifacts at Fort Moultrie, friends’ parents who were reenactors, and seeing real uniforms, muskets, and flags hanging in their homes. I even dressed up as Saint General Robert E. Lee for a book report in elementary school. I hold a degree in History from the University of South Carolina, where I spent a lot of time in the Southern Studies Department. I love history, and I continue that passion by reading about all sorts of American-centered subjects, most recently about the Black cowboys of America.

When I was growing up — immersed in this “heritage”— I was never exposed to hate or racism (though people did get salty about Yankees and carpetbaggers). I can’t remember ever hearing the N-word from anyone (maybe a kid on the playground, but that was rare). What I learned was that this was our ancestry, and people held onto nostalgia for it. They defended it with arguments about states’ rights, economic terrorism by the northern states on agriculture, congressional domination by the North, and so on. These people would never teach their kids that Black folks were anything but equal. They would never act with racism in their daily lives. What I came to understand about the war was — we didn’t talk about it. The one thing at the center of it all — slavery — just wasn’t mentioned. Outside of books and movies, it was never part of the conversation. This would come to haunt the heritage movement.

I never heard hate growing up and always saw every American as my brother or sister— but for as much as I knew about the war, I knew little about slavery. So I grew up conflicted: I felt pride in my rebel lineage, yet I loved the Constitution and this nation. I was also deeply unsettled by the obfuscation and lack of clarity around slavery, which I certainly abhorred. That couldn’t coexist. As I got older, I started to dig more into the South’s history (the Civil War was inevitable from the moment the Constitution was signed). I studied Lincoln’s assassination, Reconstruction under Johnson and Grant, and the rise of the KKK - all the way to the Civil Rights Movement. I was sure that I wasn’t raised around racists — what we felt was indeed heritage, but that was a heavily romanticized version of history. Additionally, I was also very aware that Black folks felt, with every bit of their soul, that this same history embodied pure evil. And they have one hell of a case.

 When that punk shot up Mother Emanuel AME Church in my hometown, I could no longer ignore the conflict — I had to resolve this in a way I could live with and speak about without regret.

The act was so heinous, and the pain so visceral for southern Blacks, that it was easy for me to decide that the “heritage” movement needed to check their empathy and give way — the argument was lost. Why? As I watched people argue for the flag to remain at the state house, it was clear this wasn’t a righteous fight. Why wasn’t there a movement this passionate taking on the KKK or neo-Nazi groups who adopted the flag? Let me be clear: the heritage side is not cut from the same cloth as the KKK (no pun intended) — not even close — but they missed the real fight. The heritage movement, pure of heart as they may be, should have been fighting these hate groups long before a piece-of-shit gunman, under a Confederate banner, walked into a House of God and shed innocent blood. That fight never happened. After that massacre, it was too late. Time to take the L and let it go.

So, while it may seem like opposing beliefs — seeing the Confederacy through a heritage lens and being anti-racist — can coexist. But the flag, while not a scarlet letter “ R” for anyone flying it, is no longer a symbol anyone needs to honor their ancestry. It’s been defined by hate groups for over a hundred years without a challenge. You lose all the fights you don’t lace up for (to torture Michael Scott torturing Wayne Gretzky), and groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans, et al., never put their gloves on to fight the real fight over the flag.

If Black Americans genuinely say they feel hated or lesser than when they see that flag, who are we to deny that and not ease their pain by leaving it in the history books? After all, Saint General Robert E. Lee (I’d still dress up as him) called for no monuments, no memorials to the Lost Cause. He considered the question forever settled — E Pluribus Unum.