South Carolina

I love the accent, the lovelier behaviors, etd. However, I would like to crush the pride in the slave holding South.

I once saw a group of older African American musicians. They were working at a restaurant in Florida, going from table to table doing requests. Dressed in tails they could not have been more elegant or more gracious. A table full of grinning lowlifes aggressively requested Dixie.

I wanted to crawl out of the place. Imagine how the musicians felt. I had a feeling this was not the first time because, without consultation, they played very slowly and sadly, like a funeral march.

That memory burns my brain and will until I die. For those men, it was Tuesday.

For me, that sums up the pride in the antebellum South, in the Confederate flag, in the cries of state's rites rights, in the present day empty threats of secession, all of it.

Yes, I know racism exists everywhere, but everywhere did not have an economy that depended upon slavery and everywhere did not have Jim Crow laws until the 1960's. We must somehow come to terms with that. I sure don't know how but I am not about crushing the South, just the notion that it's for some reason still ok--even a point of honor--to flaunt that flag and other symbols of slavery and racism.