Today I drove out to Orange to pick up some new hens. When I got to the designated address, I was greeted by the rebel flag. Normally I leave politics out of my posts here, but this might offer some insight into what it's like to be a Black farmer, and why there are so few of us.
There's a very good possibility that the folks living under this flag don't have a racist, prejudiced bone in their bodies. For them, the stars and bars represents bluegrass, big-ass trucks, bourbon, old barns, bobwhite hunting, and some cool facets of southern life that don't begin with the letter B. Look at their Facebook profiles, and you might even see them in the company of a lot more brown folks than you'll find in the overwhelmingly White social circles of supposedly progressive people that wax indignant about the flag.
Unfortunately, I'll never find out. Why? Because there's an equally good possibility that the folks living under this flag are among the thousands you can find, right this minute, on the forums at stormfront.org advocating violence against Black people from behind Confederate flag avatars.
If I knock on the door, Paula Deen might answer. She'll feed me biscuits, call me 'yall' even though I'm alone, invite me to her next cookout, and hopefully have the good sense to leave me out of any plantation-themed weddings.
But if I knock on the door, Dylan Roof might answer. He'll stick a gun in my face, sick his dog on me, club me with a blunt object, or otherwise precipitate a sequence of events that will leave one or both of us dead, blind, or crippled.
As a person of color, I have to make a judgment call about what the rebel flag means to the person flying it. Does it mean "heritage, not hate" or "heritage of hate?" Giving you the benefit of the doubt means I have to risk my wife becoming a 29 year old widowed single mother... so no thanks. Which is really too bad, because this really gets in the way of good business when you're a Black farmer and so many of your would-be associates insist on flying the damned thing instead of doing what we southerners are supposedly best at: not being rude and inconsiderate.