Make It Make Sense: Traveling America and Facing the Flags

I’ve been traveling across the United States, listening. Not talking—listening for over 3 years; now I am starting to talk. I’ve sat with people in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama—just trying to understand. I’ve shut my mouth and opened my ears, sometimes for hours, sometimes for years. (I still go back to them to understand.)

And after all this time, there’s still one thing I can’t fully reconcile:

How is it that the Confederate flag and the American flag so often fly side by side?

If you look at the history—really look at it—it doesn’t make sense. The Confederacy was quite literally an attempt to secede from the United States, to tear up the U.S. Constitution, and to preserve a system that enslaved human beings. We can talk about taxes all day long, but ultimately, it comes down to humanity. Humanity overrules any tax system. Yes, taxes can hurt people, but if we are comparing taxes to slavery, that isn’t even a conversation worth having.

Yet today, these two flags are paired on bumper stickers, flown over statehouses, and draped across porches—often defended as “heritage.”

I keep asking myself: Make it make sense.

When I dig deeper, I see how much of this is about narratives passed down—sometimes in good faith, sometimes as deliberate gaslighting. Many Americans have been taught that the Confederate flag is a harmless symbol of rebellion or local pride. But the specific Confederate battle flag most commonly flown today is not a neutral heritage flag. It is a symbol that has been used, again and again, to divide, to intimidate, and to reassert white supremacy after the Civil War.

Some will argue that not every Confederate soldier was fighting for slavery. I believe that. History is complicated. But if you choose to keep flying a symbol that was used to fight against the very freedoms our country claims to stand for, you can’t pretend it has no consequence.

As the saying goes: Not all supporters of the Confederacy were fighting to keep humans enslaved—but if you support it, you stand under it.

Humanity has no ethnicity. Humanity is human. No one deserves to be treated as less or to be killed for who they are. Yet I am still struck that this most basic human concept—that life and dignity belong to everyone—seems so hard to agree on.

This matters because symbols matter.

A symbol (noun) is a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.

The American flag itself is a symbol. It represents the idea of the United States, though it is not the United States itself. It does not define us—the Constitution defines us. That document is our living agreement of freedoms. The flag is a visual reminder of it.

I’ve often thought about how powerful symbols are in shaping minds. In my research, I’ve seen how flags can become propaganda tools—emotional blankets to cover up hard truths or to rally people behind a cause, no matter how flawed that cause might be.

It’s why, to me, kneeling in protest during the national anthem is not offensive. It is the very definition of freedom—using your voice (or your silence) to say, I matter. Just because the herd doesn’t like it doesn’t make it insignificant. That silent protest was an act of grief and defiance because people who looked like the man kneeling were being shot by those sworn to protect and serve them.

It’s devastating to witness the lack of empathy, the refusal to ask, Why is this American kneeling? Instead, many of the same people who bristle at this peaceful protest will fly the Confederate battle flag high, as though it were an equally valid symbol of American identity.

I’ll never forget visiting a cemetery where a Confederate soldier and a Union soldier were buried side by side. The Confederate grave had a fresh flag tucked neatly into the ground. The man was called a “rebel.” But to me, rebellion isn’t about destroying the very concept of freedom—it’s about expanding it, protecting it.

What struck me even more was that both graves had new flags placed by visitors. These men fought on opposite sides of the same country, and it’s sobering to realize they were both U.S. citizens. One fought to preserve the Union; the other fought to sever it completely and form a separate nation with a different constitution.

It’s easy to forget that the Confederacy wasn’t simply an argument over taxes or tariffs—it was a concerted attempt to replace the U.S. Constitution with their own Confederate Constitution. That document explicitly protected and promoted slavery as a permanent institution and laid out their priorities in clear language.

Here are a few passages from the Confederate Constitution itself: (you can see a lot of this in the Project 2025 and the movements that are happening around the USA)

Preamble:“We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God—do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.”

Article I, Section 9, Clause 4:

“No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”

Article IV, Section 3, Clause 3:

“In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government.”

Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1:

“The citizens of each State…shall have the right to transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.”

When you read it plainly, it becomes impossible to deny what this was about. That document was drafted to preserve and expand the enslavement of human beings.

It’s also important to remember that slavery wasn’t some marginal practice hidden in the shadows. It was a massive business—an entire economic engine that drove wealth and power for generations. In many communities across the United States, it was not only accepted but actively celebrated, reinforced by laws, churches, and the herd mentality of the time. Ending it wasn’t inevitable. It took the determination of humanitarians, abolitionists, and ordinary people willing to stand up to their neighbors and say, This is wrong. That kind of fight doesn’t happen overnight, because when an entire society profits from oppression, it will find every excuse to justify it.

At the same time, I also truly feel that many Southerners were gaslighted and used as scapegoats by the powerful men who led them. Leaders convinced countless working-class people to go to war for a system that didn’t actually benefit them. They were told it was about defending their way of life, when in reality, they were defending the wealth and power of a small ruling class. That doesn’t excuse the cause, but it does help explain how entire communities were led into a war that left them shattered—first by the fighting, then by the realization that they had been manipulated by their own leaders.

It’s a cautionary tale about how easily good people can be misled by those who wrap injustice in the language of patriotism and tradition.

I still get emotional when I see the American flag. It moves me because it represents the promise of who we could be—a nation striving toward liberty and justice for all. But it also reminds me how far we have to go.

Flags are important, yes. But no flag is more important than humanity itself. No flag should be more sacred than protecting our neighbors, respecting each other’s rights, and learning to see one another as human first.

If flying a piece of cloth becomes more important to you than your fellow Americans’ dignity and safety, then maybe it’s time to step back and ask what you’re really standing for.

I’m still traveling. I’m still listening. And I still believe we have it in us to grow—together—as citizens who care more about each other’s humanity than any flag ever could represent.