Confederate Flag's Re-emergence: Racism or Regional Pride?
 

 

 

 

It's been spotted on license plates in Atlantic City and Collingdale, draped across a truck in a Kohl's parking lot and flying on poles outside homes in Montgomery and Chester countiesYou can see it on the side of a building off Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond, hanging inside an apartment near Capitolo Playground in South Philly and painted on the "Dukes of Hazzard" replica Dodge Charger cruising around Delaware County. InCamden, it's practically the official emblem for country-rock tailgate parties outside the Susquehanna Bank Center, where a concert goer was charged this summer with bias intimidation for allegedly waving it at city residents and spewing racial slurs.

Even a Philly cop was photographed last year wearing it under his bike helmet while on duty.

Nearly 150 years after the Civil War ended, the Confederate battle flag — a complicated and incendiary symbol of rebellion, slavery, Southern pride and white supremacy — is seemingly becoming a more frequent sight north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

"I remember taking a second look and going, 'Really?' It was shocking," said Bryl Villanueva, 35, of Lafayette Hill, who recently saw a rebel flag flying in Conshohocken while on the way to a friend's house. "Maybe they're from Alabama."

What's behind the popularity of the flag in the North? Is it the dark underbelly of the rapidly growing country-music scene? Disapproval of the president? An innocent revival of the rebel spirit among Yankees who don't know — or care — what it means to the rest of society? Or something more sinister?

"Me, I fly the stars and stripes," Dereck Banks, a self-described history buff from Clifton Heights, Delaware County, told the Philadelphia Daily News FULL STORY.