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My introduction to the Confederate flag was watching The Dukes of Hazzard as a young kid, where Bo and Luke Duke had the emblem on top of their orange Dodge Charger. I had no idea what it meant at the time. The show was a funny spoof about southern hillbilly bootleggers evading the bumbling local police.

Then, as a teenager spending my summers in Coeur d’Alene, twice I walked over from the City Beach basketball courts to watch Richard Butler and his Aryan Nation band of white supremacists proudly flying both the Confederate flag and Swasticka flag in the Fourth of July parade. It was there I first realized the hate and racism behind the symbol, and I can still remember the pit in my stomach upon seeing it. This was anything but funny.

Back then, North Idaho had a well-earned national reputation as a haven for racists, even though it was a tiny minority of people tainting our region. But Butler would pass on, and his Hayden Lake compound was shuttered, and Idaho quit making the national news for the worst of reasons.

Today, I get that same pit in my stomach when I see the Confederate flag in North Idaho, whether on a hat, bumper sticker, T-shirt or flagpole. I now understand what the symbol that adorns the Mississippi state flag means, especially to folks in these parts.

What a shameful pox on North Idaho that we might send a politician to Boise to represent us who proudly stood in a photo next to that flag.

ERIC PLUMMER

Sandpoint