Heritage, Not Hate

 
What if it is
Heritage,
Not hate?
What if the man who claims to honor his ancestors by flying their colors
Is actually doing just that?
How can you be sure that the blue X, white stars, and red background really symbolize hatred for all things not white?
I know that Georgia officially brought back the Rebel flag in direct response to federal orders to desegregate.
But I also know that Kennedy didn't get fully involved in Jim Crow affairs until some white people were killed.
I've seen Dylan Roof and David Duke and Bull Connor wave the same banner as former governor George Wallace.
And for the same reason.
Yet, while I've never seen it anywhere near Michael Bloomberg, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama;
I have seen actions just as heinous.
New York is a northern state, but "stop and frisk" is just as dangerous to black folks as an Alabama police dog ever was.
Did you see what Bush, through FEMA, did to New Orleans?
Hillary?
Wasn't she representing the "stop and frisk" zone in Congress?
And Mr. President. Barack Obama.
A man I helped put in office once he decided Chicago was not big enough for his ambitions.
He is the biggest letdown of them all.
Never will catch him waving a Rebel flag.
Not even in death.
So why did dead white children inspire him to speak when a teen-ager shot repeatedly while dying on the ground in the city which first put its trust in him garner no such outpouring of anger and grief?
As a Southern man, I know for a fact that some flag fliers Hate everything not white,
And black folks in particular
I shoot guns too
So bring that shit my way if ya want to!!!
But some of my best friends have flags on cars
Their houses
And even tattoos
But they've given me money,
protected my life,
and gone shooting with me.
Hell, I own a few flags of my own.
But it makes as much sense to tell another man how to honor his people as it does for you to tell me to disown my grandfather who taught me to shoot,
to work for what I want,
to respect myself and other people;
But was also a womanizing,
Purple Heart awarded soldier
who drank, cussed, didn't go to church,
and used beat my grandmother until I was five years old.
The flag might be Heritage
Instead of Hate.
But it's just a flag
And I choose to make my decisions based on behavior
Not some symbol from 1860.