I sometimes refer to myself as an “Arkie in exile.” Most of my life was spent in Arkansas (I’ve been other places; I’m not a total hillbilly) until August 2001, when I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana.

Consider what happened a month later, and talk about your whole world changing.

But still, there seem to be forces at work up here that keep me from feeling too homesick. “Hoosier hospitality” is almost as good as the Southern kind and can be just as thin a façade when you look at the conservative culture beneath. Similar attitudes, laws, and other factors often have me saying I’ve “moved from Arkansas to Arkansas.”

And it’s more than the global warming making winters here milder.

Contrary to the way I feel at times, this is not a Southern state. But try telling that to the guy driving his pickup with the big Confederate flag mounted on the back. There are a lot of people like him around, but Pickup Man is most visible example. To deflect the criticism he often gets, the truck’s tailgate has bumper stickers that say “Heritage, Not Hate.”

Ah, bumper sticker logic. Of course, “heritage, not hate” is just another one of those hollow terms and phrases that get thrown around like they mean something. Like saying “hate the sin, but love the sinner” when it’s the “sinner” who gets the brunt of the hate or being “pro-life” while supporting capital punishment and senseless wars. The sticker may as well say “imagine whirled peas” for all the good it does in addressing the underlying issue.

If this person truly believes his decal’s sentiment, then he has some explaining to do. Being a Southerner by birth, I’m truly bothered by his display. What “heritage” does this person claim?

Contrast the flag and the sticker with the Indiana license plate below. If you paid any attention at all in history, you know that Indiana remained a Union state throughout the Civil War. It wasn’t even, like neighboring Kentucky, a “border” state that stayed in the North in spite of Southern sympathies. In fact, Indiana was one of the biggest states per capita represented in the Grand Army of the Republic. To be a Hoosier and fly the Southern Cross seems an insult to the thousands of fellow citizens who took arms against it.

Still, you can’t help what state’s license plate is on a vehicle. That is totally up to residence. But I have yet to hear or see anything saying that this person is a transplant from Tennessee or Mississippi or any other state that took up the Confederate cause. If this person were, I’d suggest a change in banner.

The true flag of the Confederate States of America was the “Stars and Bars,” a stars and stripes pattern similar to the United States flag. The “X” cross was devised as a means of avoiding confusion on the battlefield, the Confederate “battle flag.” But since there are no battles raging, the Stars and Bars should suffice to declare a Southern heritage, just as it does as one of the Six Flags over Texas and at government-maintained places like Arkansas Post National Monument.

To be an Indiana citizen and flying the Southern battle flag is a reminder of the years in the early 20th century when the Ku Klux Klan practically ran the state. The Klan usurped the Southern Cross for its standard, took over the vigilante “night riders” who kept order during post-Civil War anarchy, and focused on the most ugly and paranoid aspects of Southern (or to be honest, American) culture. The fact that they are an archaic joke now doesn’t lessen the pain of what they have done in the past.

This is not “heritage, not hate,” this is a heritage of hate.

This confused jackass has caused me to reconsider my own feelings about the flag, which I used to fly proudly as my birthright. I will not battle over the battle flag but will regretfully put it aside until other various jerks stop destroying any good it ever represented. The principles of state’s rights and other non-slavery/bigotry issues can find expression in other ways.

I have plenty of other flags to choose from. I love the Stars and Stripes, the Arkansas diamond, and even don’t mind the blue and gold Indiana banner. And Indianapolis has one of the coolest city flags I’ve ever seen.

Still, I don’t need to fly a flag to tell everyone where I’m from. Such showy displays are unbecoming of a Southern gentleman anyway.