After the Charleston church shooting in South Carolina, much controversy over the Confederate flag arose. Does the flag represent slavery? Should it be allowed to fly? Does it offend other individuals? All these questions were answered in June 2015 when the South Carolina Governor signed a bill to have the flag lowered from the State Capitol; this lowering of the flag signified the beginning of the end to a long-time Southern symbol.
Adopted in 1865 during the American Civil War, the Confederate flag was to represent to the Southern views of slavery. After the war, the flag evolved into a general symbol of the South and its people. As times change, objects and their meanings can change as well; for example the svastika or swastika originally was meant to look like the movement of the sun, it was later adopted by the Buddhists and Hindus as a means of "good fortune.". In the late 1930s through the 1940s, the Nazi Party took the swastika and turned it into the party symbol thereby changing the meaning forever. As the flag once represented slavery and its ties to the South, its meaning changed over time, as did the swastika for the Nazi Party.
For our Southern citizens, the flag is a part of who they are. It is tattooed on their skin, it hangs off their houses and cars, and they wear it on their sleeves with pride. When I look at the "Rebel Flag," I think of the South, I do not think of what it once meant. For over a hundred years, not once has the flag been at the heart of such controversy.
Over the Labor Day weekend at the NASCAR 500 race in Darlington, South Carolina, the race was interrupted by a rally of individuals fighting for the right to bear the flag. NASCAR officials were conflicted as to what side to take: the new, politically correct view or the Southern tradition of the flag.
In my view, the flag once represented a time in which slavery was supported; however, it changed, it evolved, and it now represents a group of individuals who are proud to be from the South, so why take that away from them? As a country, we should think before we act and understand before we judge.
