Proud to be an American and of your confederate heritage?

The confederacy were literally fighting against The United States. The Confederacy were traitors to the United States.

In much the same way that the United States were traitors to the British. That's why we call Benedict Arnold a traitor in The United States. The founding fathers would have been hung for treason if The United States had lost the war.

If they win it's called a Revolutionary War if they lose it's called a Civil War.

You can not be proud of your confederate/southern heritage and proud to be an American at the same time.

We don't have Daughters of British Loyalists so why do we have Daughters of the Confederacy?

I'm from Arkansas, Arkansas was one of the confederate states and I have ancestors that fought on the side of the south in the Civil War. But I'm to American to be proud of my confederate heritage.

Chattel slavery is and was disgusting, inhumane, morally wrong, and uncivilized. And yes it was about slavery. The only way it was about economics was the economics of slavery.

They thought that we couldn't live without it and have been trying to use the laws and fear tactics of groups like the KKK to keep it that way more or less ever since.

Jim Crow laws were designed to imprison as many black citizens (men mostly) then renting prisoners out as cheap labor and to terrorize black citizens.

There was also something called sharecropping the way that it was used for the most part in The South to keep the people the landowners in power and poor black farmers poor.

My own grandparents were sharecroppers as well as migratory farm workers until they could afford to buy their own land and work it for themselves. But the landowners has all the power in sharecropping.

To be proud of my confederate heritage I would have to be proud of all these things and I'm not.

The confederate flag was a battle flag and symbolizes the treasonous Confederacy and work that people so proud of their southern heritage have been trying to keep the oppression, terrorism, and the atrocities done before, during, and after the Civil War.

Most southern states only started flying the confederate flag at their capitals and putting up confederate monuments during the Civil Rights Movement.

The feeling that I have for my devout christian, slave owning/confederate ancestors is complicated at bast, but I can't say I have ever felt proud of them. I can't change who they were or where I come from. All I can do is work as hard as I can to undo and heal as much of damage they have done.

People often call it white guilt but the damage wasn't done it one generation and can't be undone in one ether. I don't really see it as guilt but as a responsibility to help fix it. The people living now have inherited a lot of things from the generations that have come before us good and bad, status, connections, and wealth.

And you can't tell people to "get over slavery", "we'v moved on", "I never owned slaves" and also say "I'm proud of my confederate/southern heritage". You have not moved on and you aren't letting any one else do it ether.