Obama was the first President to ever visit a prison when he came to speak at El Reno recently. The President was, of course, received with Confederate flags. This seriously out-of-hand flag debate — where just about everybody seems to be missing the point — has had me shaking my head, face in palms. I’ll refer to an unappreciated Facebook comment on the matter.

“These people are assholes for doing this, but it is there (sic) right to wave whatever flag they damn well choose, but I would eat my hat if most of these people aren’t racist as hell. They came out in force to wave a flag that symbolizes the southern tradition of oppressing black people, at the first black President. That’s ~ Almost ~ as bad as greeting Netanyahu or Bernie Sanders with swastikas. Pointless divisive bigotry. If they really want to express their beliefs they should really just hold up flags with pictures of black people on them and a big x across it instead of passing off their right to be racist as ‘southern heritage’; even if it was literally the klu klux klan greeting him they have their right to demonstration. However if I saw someone stranded on the road and they have a confederate flag Im probably gonna keep driving.”

Few people will argue that you have the right to fly a Confederate flag; however, four out of five dentists agree that you are, in fact, racist for doing it.

The sort of answers you get when you ask people what they mean by “southern heritage” are very similar to the answers you get when you ask a non-celiac, gluten-free person what gluten is — mostly “uh,” “uhm”  and ‘ah.”

Of course it is a person’s right to be self-righteous about their gluten intake and flag of choice, but in the sort of Facebook post I was lurking in you find people trying to argue that the Civil War was not about slavery.

This Confederate flag debate is great because it is letting people bring their prejudice out in the open. Somebody should really assemble a database out of these people.