It's part of US history and, as you mentioned, many in the South are incredibly loyal to it. Their ancestors fought and died for their ideals and their pride.
Personally, I don't see it as a symbol of racism. The Nazi flag is worlds away from the Confederate flag, because of what each meant. The Confederacy was interested in keeping free, not in wiping out entire races.
The Democrat party was the party of slavery, but no one thinks of them as a symbol and legacy of racism...do they?
And black people fought on both sides of the Civil War. The Southerners, black and white, were defending their homes together. I don't mean to make it sound chummy or it made all statuses equal, but Southern pride isn't limited solely to whites.
An excerpt from
this article reads:
Quote:
In 2003 H.K. Edgerton, a Black man, attracted national attention when he carried the Confederate battle flag and led 20 white men in a march in North Carolina, where he spoke of contributions made by Black soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.
“Tell the kids this flag is history and heritage. It is not hate,” said Edgerton, the former president of the Asheville NAACP branch. “It is not a white thing. That red represents my blood just as much as it represents theirs.”
In 2006 political activist Anthony Hervey and his brother Harry, who are also black, wore Confederate uniforms and displayed the flag in Mississippi in front of the Jackson City Council.
“The battle flag stands for freedom and states rights,” said Anthony Hervey, who claims his great-great uncle fought for the Confederacy. Hervey is also president of the Black Confederate Soldiers Association, and wrote the book
Why I Wave the Confederate Flag.“The U.S. flag is actually the flag of slavery,” he asserts. “It flew over 100 years of slavery, and Native Americans were annihilated under that flag.”
Reply
