LETTER: Confederate flag is always bad

I was greatly disappointed to see the Nov. 17 article covering the memorial parade for Zachary Rhoads. The coverage, including the picture of the Confederate flag, was profoundly one-sided and inappropriate. MTPR’s coverage, for example, included the reaction of onlookers.

As a Southerner, the parading of the Confederate flag by high schoolers is also cause for concern. Even with this incident, folks have been espousing the usual nonsense about the flag representing freedom, heritage, and states’ rights. This is simply not the case.

As a young girl, my mother was a student in the New Orleans public school system during the integration of 1960; protesters waived the Confederate flag. When integration came to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, protesters waived the Confederate flag. And when African-American, James Byrd, was murdered in my native Texas in 1998, one of the perpetrators sported a Confederate flag tattoo. There are numerous other examples.

The silver lining in this incident is that people have spoken against this display. While the freedom of speech allows us to display things such as the Confederate flag, it does not absolve us from the standards of common decency. The Confederate flag has been and continues to be a symbol of oppression, racism and violence and to declare otherwise is, at best, ignorant. —John Ratka-Skinner, Marion