I have been arguing about the flag in my small Southern town of 840 people, some of who have now taken to flying the Confederate flag. Believe it or not, some of them are slowly starting to see the light. A sad reality is that some of these folks don't know any black, so they haven't gained that perspective. I just shared a photo with them on Facebook of Michigan-born Confederate flag wavers Ted Nugent and Kid Rock. It's pretty clear the flag doesn't represent Southern pride to those guys. I also explained that there are so many other things to be prideful about in the South (and there are), which is why my wife and I moved here.
As Americans and human beings, no one should feel the need to defend everything about their "heritage." My father had extreme racist views, enough so that he was angry with one of my sisters for dating an Italian (I'm not sure why my non-racist mother ever married him). It would have been his preference for his three children to grow up thinking like him. Instead we rebelled. My dad came around to see the light in his final years. It's a shame he didn't earlier because he was otherwise a great guy who would have had a better life with his children. I'm not sharing this story to denigrate my deceased father, but rather to point out that people need to be honest about the bad things, learn from them, and move on. The Civil War is one of the most uncomplicated chapters in U.S. history. It was about slavery. The fact that it would create financial hardship for many Southerners does not matter because slavery was never right in the history of the world. Also, a person's civil rights should never come down to "state's rights" in the land of the free. American children are taught about the reason for the Civil War in the fourth grade and are taught correctly. The Confederate flag was the emblem of the Southern states, who needed their own flag now that they were no longer a part of the Union. When they were defeated in the war and rejoined the Union, that flag should have disappeared because it no longer served a purpose. One nation, one flag. It is not a complicated matter. Amazingly, I saw a "Causes of the Civil War" forum yesterday that had more than 300 replies when at most it should have two total posts.
Regarding other crucial issues in America, I think the most important one is poverty and has been for a long time. In the school district where I work the poverty level is above 40 percent. This number is rising due to low income housing in our district. I deal with children every day who have little or nothing. If you think of this issue and say "not my problem" then you are part of the problem. We need to make our political leaders, our candidates, and our media address this topic as vociferously as they did the gay marriage issue. Yet when I log onto Facebook I see plenty of rainbows and nothing about poverty. Does poverty even have a symbol? Enough is enough. It is time to turn the page on that non-issue and focus on the complex issue of poverty. These people have waited their turn long enough. And don't anyone even dare suggest poor people are lazy and need to "pick themselves up by their bootstraps" when no bootstraps exist. These people are not statistics and every family's story is different. Not addressing their plight is the reason I stop short of calling America a truly great nation. There are no easy solutions as this problem will not be "fixed" in our lifetime. Children not yet born are destined to live their entire lives in poverty or end up incarcerated just because they were born poor. That isn't right and needs to be addressed.
