I am disappointed that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of allowing Texans to display a Confederate emblem on their license plates. Are we on the way to becoming Alabama? (I fear that the answer is yes.) Why not just have a bumper sticker that proclaims, “Redneck and proud of it.”
I know that Jerry Patterson, who has been the leading advocate for memorializing the Confederacy, is a good fellow, but he is wrong about this. Confederate license plates celebrate a terrible episode from America’s past, the era of slavery and the denigration of black people. There is no other way to put it. Everybody, black or white, understands what the Stars and Bars stand for, and it’s not about cotton bales and magnolia trees.
