So I am unsurprised that the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina capitol grounds has been cause for many southerners to brandish their support for it. During critical moments of reform, people clinging to imperiled ideologies find ways to fight back. Take the anti-suffragists who battled against the Nineteenth Amendment long after the first women in the U.S. cast their ballots, for instance, or the presidential candidates today denouncing the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.

Ironically, the Confederate flag owes its political resurrection to this sort of backlash—not in the immediate years after the war, not even a few decades after the war, but in the mid-20th century. Desegregation brought it out of closets and museums, revived as a symbol of white supremacy (the ideology of the Confederacy) and segregation. So while it sounds nice to claim that the flag is really only about honoring ancestors who fought valiantly during the Civil War, or that the flag represents the unmatched heartbreak and camaraderie that losing elicited among the citizens of the rebel states, any serious examination of history simply doesn’t back that up.

This history has been lost—or is simply ignored—by a number of southerners who say they don’t sport the flag with the subjugation of black people in mind. They insist it is about Southern pride. Perhaps to them, that is indeed all it’s about. The other “stuff” doesn’t matter anymore, and when people attack the flag, they attack their heritage. That is why the commissioner of a town that neighbors mine claims he is pushing for the flag to be flown over the city courthouse.

But it is the Confederate flag supporters who still embrace the doctrine of white supremacy who have the history right. And acts of racial intimidation, like the one that a group of Georgians are facing gang-related charges for this week, fit the history far better than claims about heritage. Yet there is little to distinguish their malice from others’ ignorance. And that matters because the consequences of that malice have manifested over the years in the form blatant discrimination, racial profiling, and the mass incarceration of black people. The Southern solidarity that the flag purportedly represents is not real; those who brandish it can’t even agree on its essence. It does more to divide the region than to unite it. And it’s certainly not a symbol of the South that I know today.

It was in the South that I was taught to appreciate the small things in life, and to love family and friends. It was in the South that I first saw firsthand the value in understanding different people and ideas, and in challenging my preconceptions. Real people—real southerners—are defined by these values every day. Yet they’re unlikely to be what comes to mind when non-southerners think about “the South.” The infatuation with the Confederate flag likely has some role in that.

Symbols matter, but the South as a region is far too nuanced to be fittingly represented by a Civil War battle flag with a contentious history. Southerners who agree have a responsibility to move into a new era, and to reclaim “Southern pride.” Because if the Confederate flag is my only means of displaying my Southern pride, then the South has already lost me.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.