A Red Flag

I'm going to tell you an incredibly unflattering story about myself.

I tend to do this a lot; I'll do something horrifically embarrassing, threaten my husband's life if he ever mentions it again, then immediately turn around and tell an entire room of people.

I am powerless against the temptation of a good story.

This, however, is not a "good story." This is not me being daft. This does not involve bodily functions or my daughter screaming about genitalia on a busy sidewalk.

A few months after I moved to the city, my boss summoned me to her office, telling me we needed to “speak.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone needs to “speak” with me, the speaking is rarely anything I actually want to hear.

Nervous, I pushed my chair back and began the very long short walk into her office. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I saw that we were not alone.

The company president sat there with an odd expression on his face.

A co-worker had accused me of racism.

Rare is the occasion that I am speechless. But my thoughts raced far too fast for me to catch even one by its tail and throw it out into the air between us.

My brain quickly edited a montage of all remembered interactions with my accuser. The search yielded nothing, not one moment that I could imagine being taken in that way. 

Finally, words came out of my mouth. I couldn't tell you exactly what they were, but, strung together, they must've included some sort of denial along with a question of the exact accusations against me.

Apparently, the only specific allegation was that I’m from North Carolina. Which I am.

But being from North Carolina is not a litmus test for racism. Geographical borders cannot pen ignorance. Haters are everywhere. Even New York.

Yet, coming back to the South, I see things with sharper eyes. I see large, far-reaching consequences where before I could only see one person’s small-mindedness.

And I see far too many Confederate flags for my comfort.

What does this flag mean to you?

Maybe this is my own bigotry. Maybe people don’t intend the “Stars and Bars” as a political or social statement. Maybe they are merely expressing pride in their Southern heritage.

But as I drove past Talladega last Thursday, where thousands camped for the NASCAR race, my stomach lurched at the sight of all the Confederate flags flying.

One hundred and fifty years and two days after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, this looked like a brand-new battlefield.

The visceral reaction at seeing those flags, though, helped me better understand the allegations leveled against me more than a decade ago.

My accuser couldn't separate the legacy of enslavement, Jim Crow and the Klan from me and my childhood. To her, that is the Southern heritage.

And that, to me, is heartbreaking. An entire people thrown out with the bathwater.

How do we acknowledge the past and move forward together?