Comment on Essay: A son of the South, but no longer of the South

For over 150 years, proud descendants of Confederate rebels have proclaimed that our ancestors were good to their slaves, and that President Abraham Lincoln and the Yankees misunderstood the true nature of "the peculiar institution." The massacre of nine African-Americans in Charleston, S.C., however, may be a tipping point in the South's veneration of this heritage. [...] are we ready to dismiss the myths that surround that flag and address the truth about American racism? Into my early teens, I believed the Southern propaganda that my forefathers were not traitors to the United States, but Texan patriots fighting for states' rights. In an 1864 letter from the Battle of Yellow Bayou, I learned how my great-grandfather's 20-year-old brother Will obeyed his commander's order to retreat and was shot in the back by a Union soldier. [...] I also read the Ordinance of Secession in which Texas joined the Confederacy because the North rejected the "beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color - a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law." Another great-grandfather helped white lawmakers impose Jim Crow laws that denied African-Americans their rights. We don't mention how our grandparents didn't compete with African-Americans for their college educations or salaried jobs. Black Lives Matter protests and videos of racist behavior reveal our divided nation, but police tactics and political correctness are not the root problem. The divide exists because two communities hold divergent views of our nation's history and what we must do to overcome America's original sin of slavery.