opinion

A guy, his truck and the Confederate flag

Last week, I was at Macomb Community College for an event. While scanning the sea of parking, looking for an empty spot, it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was a pickup truck with Confederate and American flags strapped to each side of the truck bed, and the sort of bumper stickers (Guns Yea! Obama Boo!) you might expect from someone with the gall to fly the rebel battle flag in post-Charleston America.

I thought hard about what to do to this vulnerable and unprotected symbol of racism and slavery. Rip it down? Rig it so that when the vehicle moves, it rips itself down? Wait for the owner to return, and give him a piece of my mind?

Yeah, I thought about those things. And then I did what normal people in modern America do. I pulled out my phone, took a picture, let that picture wander through Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and then went to my event.

Comments started accruing in my social media accounts. It turns out I wasn’t the first person to notice this particular use of the First Amendment, nor was I the first to notice his defense of the Second.

Friends and acquaintances started suggesting creative ways that I could deal with the flag, most of them involving some sort of property damage.

Related: Confederate flag easy to find among NASCAR fans at MIS

I thought about it, and while it might make me feel like I did my part to stick one more tiny nail in the Civil War’s coffin, in the end, I would be angering someone. And while I knew very little about this person, I have a vivid imagination. This person has views that I despise, and purports to have weapons that I think should not be as widely available as they are. In short, if I anonymously kicked this hornet’s nest, I wouldn’t be the one sticking around to get stung.

Upon returning to my car, there was the truck. There were the flags. There were the bumper stickers. And there was the driver.

I walked up to him, camera phone in hand, and asked if I could interview him. And while Matt McGuire and I didn’t change each other’s minds on much of anything, we did have a conversation that, if not terribly productive, at least led to a little more understanding, and a little less hate, if only on my side.

Related: Taking down Confederate flag only the first step

Five minutes after first speaking to Matt, I no longer thought he was racist, at least not in the classic sense. I think he’s misinformed and young, and has time to mature. I think his values are not going to make the world any better than it is now, but five minutes earlier, neither were mine.

Ben Duell Fraser is a video producer for PishPosh.Tv, and hosts the weekly Slash Detroit podcast, a roundtable discussion of news and politics with local journalists and politicians. Listen to Slash Detroit on SoundCloud or search for it on iTunes.