A new Civil War is being started in South Carolina; a new war of ideals based around the symbolism of a flag. One side claims tradition and a time when the southern states were strong and unyielding, the other claims it represents a time when people owned people. It was an issue few debated on a national level until recently. It took a deranged racist shooting nine people in a church to push the idea that the Confederate flag should become (and remain) a relic of the past. It’s about time the Confederate flag be put in a museum for our posterity to view and for us to say “This flag represented a time when brother fought against brother to protect a way of life that limited the lives of others because of the color of their skin. This is a reminder of a war of ideals. This is a reminder of a racist and brutal past that we need not repeat.” When I look at the Confederate flag, I think of a time when people owned people who were only considered three-fifths of a person (if that) simply because they had darker skin and that’s nothing to be proud of.

I grew up in Dixie, always below the Mason-Dixon Line and I’m very proud of that. I grew up surrounded by SEC sports and the excitement of Derby Day. My high school alma mater’s mascot is a Rebel (dressed as a Confederate soldier at one point and now closely resembles my idea of a plantation owner—so not a lot of improvement there) and the fight song is “Dixie”. I say “is”, but thankfully in the next few years I’ll be able to change that to “was”—the school board decided this week to phase out the mascot and the fight song and I couldn’t be more proud. Other reactions were not so proud. Comments on the Facebook announcement include every opinion anyone could ever think—including a comment saying that if the school changed the mascot, they should require prayer each morning to balance it out by a person with the Confederate flag as their profile picture (because apparently freedom of speech matters and freedom of religion doesn’t, but that’s beside the point). This decision shows progress. It shows the reality of the school I knew. I knew AP scholars, people with perfect and near-perfect ACT scores and well-qualified teachers who truly loved their job and their students. Our school has national awards in the arts and continually makes above-average scores on standardized tests. I didn’t like that the face of our school represented an inability to move on from a dark past. We aren’t ashamed of our mascot and we aren’t ashamed of our fight song, but it’s long overdue for a change. These things don’t represent who we are as a student body just as the Confederate flag should not represent us as southerners. Taking down the flag and removing these symbols from public areas doesn’t mean we’re completely getting rid of them and it doesn’t show shame—it simply shows that we’re moving on from the 1850s. Symbols like this make non-southerners think we’re all backwards and stuck in the past. There’s no shame in standing up to state your beliefs and there’s no shame in tradition and the south has continually fought tooth and nail to preserve a certain way of life and there’s no shame in that. But, as southerners, we’re so much more than a flag. We have a tough past marred with oppression to face and it is time we face it and move on. We shouldn’t hold onto symbols like these believing they represented a time of prosperity because it was prosperity built on the backs and with the blood, sweat, and tears of African Americans. Change sucks and we southerners are both sometimes too proud and too stubborn to accept change, but change is a-comin’ and the sooner we get past it, the better. Taking initiative and removing these symbols from our façade brings room for so much progress. These symbols divide us by race. It fuels people like Dylann Roof. Why would we want to be associated with someone who takes pride in a flag that represents the enslavement of a portion of our population? And we don’t; southerners and gun owners alike have been distancing themselves from him by saying he’s a rogue freak who took things too far yet the very symbols of which he based his ideals are posted everywhere in the south. So why would we want to be associated with such a symbol? We claim it represents states’ rights but we’re kidding ourselves if we actually believe that’s where the statement ends. It represents the states’ rights to keep African Americans as slaves—to not consider them a full person so maybe we won’t feel as bad for not wanting to pay them for their work. So it’s time these symbols are removed from buildings owned by the public and run by the government. It’s been over 150 years, it’s time to move on and say goodbye to the past.

Are we truly even saying goodbye? Sure, we’re taking down the flags and we won’t be so in your face about Civil War memorabilia, but there will still be museums, plantation houses, and battle grounds. We aren’t forgetting our past and we aren’t tucking it away in a drawer, we’re simply saying that we aren’t those people anymore and we aren’t merely our past. We aren’t people that need to hold onto a time when the southern states were strong and prosperous on the backs of people who were considered property and pretend it wasn’t as bad as it was. We have a lot to be proud of that have nothing to do with slavery or the Civil War. We have big cities and we have the most beautiful country-side in the United States. We have centers of culture like Nashville and Dallas. We have traditions like tailgating at football games, potatoes au gratin at Thanksgiving, and continually being known for our politeness. We have top universities and we have former presidents and vice presidents that call the south home. We still have sweet tea, Derby Day hats, and the SEC. We still have our proud culture below the Mason-Dixson Line that won’t go away even if some mascots change and some flags are lowered one last time.