Immediately after starting the discussion, a first classman attempted to sidestep the initial and main question of whether the flag was racist or heritage by saying that he thought it was both.  I somewhat agree that we should be empathetic to those that feel it is apart of their family as generation after generation was born and raised in the states that were previously apart of the Confederate States of America, but what I really liked was Dr. Agam-Segal’s rebuttal analogy.  He said, “Say you have a barrel of wine and a barrel of sewage.  If you pour the wine into the barrel of sewage, you still have a barrel of sewage.  If you pour the barrel of sewage into the barrel of wine, you still have a barrel of sewage.”  By this he means that no matter how you try to water down the negative component or keep them separate in the same barrel, you still end up with the ugliest ingredient which is, in this case, racism.

The first class-man then responded with a simple, “I don’t see it that way,” and then tried to come up with a reasoning behind why the two were able to coexist.  Once he had completed his somewhat lacking argument a third class-man, who was sitting next to me, brought up that those who fly the flag, even if they fly it for a heritage reason, understand that it can and does hold a racist connotation.  By having people in the discussion realize that even if you hold  a heritage belief you are still fostering a racist symbol, he closed in bringing up the question of: Should the racism in the flag out weigh the heritage aspect in the discussion of whether the flag should be flown?