Comments on Race
ON ABRAHAM LINCOLNAlthough Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s heart was in the right place, the Southern Avenger does regret that Lincoln’s murder automatically turned him into a martyr.

I raise a personal toast every May 10 to celebrate John Wilkes Booth’s birthday.ON SOUTHERN SECESSIONIn my early 20s, I was a full-blown, right-wing radical. As a member of the Southern secessionist group the League of the South, I argued seriously for the states of the old Confederacy to break away from the rest of the Union. I thought it might be better to tone down the radicalism and at least try to appear more respectable. But when I came across an old column of mine last week, I realized that I never really changed. I’m still just as radical or crazy, depending on your perspective. In fact, I might be getting worse.ON THE CONFEDERATE FLAGBlack Americans are encouraged to celebrate their racial identity by appealing to their shared experience of injustice and African roots. Hispanics indulge in an even more nationalistic form of racial identity by flying Mexican flags, listening to a foreign music that both black and white Americans have never even heard of and turning everywhere they settle into northern outposts of their Mexican homeland.

Not only are whites not afforded the same right to celebrate their own cultural identity – but anything that is considered ‘too white’ is immediately suspect. The term ‘diversity’ has become nothing more than a code word for ‘not white,’ and it’s a shame that just because we have fair skin, we are always denied fair treatment.

The scenes accompanying the relocation of the Confederate flag last week looked ominously like the beginning of a race war. Flag supporters, mostly white, traded barbs with flag opponents, who were mostly black, and the tension level proved that simply moving the flag does not put this issue to rest.

This scene was proof positive of the inevitable havoc that occurs anytime you take what should be a personal issue to the political level. Black and white middle class Southerners have lived in peace with Confederate flags, Martin Luther King T-shirts, the playing of Dixie and Amazing Grace for sometime now. These cultural expressions are indeed rooted in both African and European American traditions, but more importantly, they are both Southern traditions, traditions which we have respected, nurtured, and until recently, were able to be expressed freely.

This coexistence is only possible when these issues remain at the personal level. The white carpenter never thinks to condemn his black co-worker who wears a “black is beautiful” T-shirt. The black fisherman never thinks to condemn the white tackle shop owner who wears a Confederate baseball cap. If you travel to any flea market, construction site or shopping mall within SC you’ll see what are traditionally black and white symbols, side by side, and no controversy is to be found. This is called mutual respect.

It is only when some malicious hate group, like the KKK or the NAACP exploits these issues at the political level that they become, abstract, impersonal and volatile.

These groups are the true hate-mongers, and the groups in power today seek nothing less than the ultimate destruction of the traditional identity of Southern whites, who in turn, have no voice and receive no respect – so it shouldn’t come as a shock that flag-waving Southerners are really pissed off. And it should be no surprise when their hate-filled attackers find some of that hate is directed back at them.