I guess by Florida standards, this is a pretty tame story. There are no strung-out bath salt zombies gnawing down on human flesh, no methed-out naked dudes frantically pooping and masturbating during a home invasion. None of the more “colorful” kinds of stories we’ve come to expect from the Sunshine State. No, this story is rather mundane and predictable: get several thousand Confederate flag-supporting rednecks together in the same place and someone was almost obligated to discharge a firearm.
Police estimate that 2000 vehicles participated in the ‘Florida Southern Pride Ride,’ a seventeen mile-long parade of Confederate flag-waving inbreds taking place in Ocala, Florida.
Gunshots were reportedly fired resulting from an altercation over the flag, but no one was harmed in the incident and no suspects have yet been named. WKMG Orlando reports that the originally planned parade rout had to be re-routed to avoid possible violent confrontations as the parade crossed through a predominantly black neighborhood. Yes, you read that correctly. These wonderfully sensitive people had planned to take their ignorant little demonstration through a black neighborhood. Tell me again how this is all about heritage, not hate?
One event goer described their participation as follows:
This isn’t about hatred. This isn’t about racism. This isn’t about black and white. We are not in hate of anybody. We just don’t want our rights taken away to support our Southern heritage.
Oh the poor oppressed Southern white people in American society! Someone needs to inform this gentleman that no one is taking away his “rights.” To my knowledge, not a single U.S. citizen has had their first amendment right to display the flag suspended. The nation at-large has just decided that a banner symbolizing slavery, racism, segregation, and lynchings no longer has any place in polite society. You and all of your ill-mannered sister-cousins still have every right to fly that traitorous rag.
This event comes on the heels of officials in Marion County voting to restore the Confederate flag to display outside of the McPherson Governmental Complex, after an interim county administrator had ordered the flag removed following the tragic shootings in Charleston, SC. Good job, Florida.
At the same time that the state of South Carolina is deciding at long last to turn the page on a painful chapter of its history, one of your counties is deciding that it’s time to double down on racist hate.
Featured image via Facebook
