Full disclosure. I do not like the Confederate flag. As a Black person, I find it to be incredibly racist, offensive and downright disrespectful.
But if I were to assume that every Black person thought like me, I’d be wrong.
Unlike me, Karen Cooper doesn’t find the flag to be indicative of slavery, oppression, rape and murder. Cooper, who is Black, told the Washington Post that the flag embodies something else entirely.
“I actually think that it represents freedom,” the ardent tea party supporter says in a video interview that’s been making the rounds online. “It represents a people who stood up to tyranny.”
Cooper isn’t alone.
There’s an entire group of activists, the Viriginia Flaggers, who reject the idea that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism and hate. The group was formed in response to a decision to remove the Confederate flag from public view in several locations throughout the south.
Cooper’s argument? If the flag was a racist symbol, she wouldn’t be an accepted member of a group composed of mostly withe Southerners.
MOSTLY white.
“I’m not advocating slavery or think that, you know, it was right,” she says. “It wasn’t, and none of my friends think it was. It was just something that happened. It didn’t just happen in the South, it happened worldwide,” she said in a documentary posted to the Washington Post.
Okay…
Watch the video below.
