Non-Racist Flies Confederate Flag, Makes News

"My dad flies one,"Montgomery says. "He's not a racist."

So the sophomore said he was surprised when a Husker Courtyards resident assistant approached him and asked him to take the flag out of his window mere days after he put it up.

A black student, Jennings, had gone to the university, upset about its presence.

Unlike Montgomery, the Confederate flag signifies to her the worst part of the South she hails from, and the country in which she lives.

"- (I)t is a shameful reminder of slavery, segregation and hundreds of years of oppression,"she wrote in a Aug. 30 guest editorial in the Daily Nebraskan, UNL's student newspaper.

The journalism student sat at a computer writing that editorial for five or six hours, she says, breaking only to cry.

Once you accept that this country isn't as integrated or racially harmonious as The Gap ads suggest, that there will be portions of our society that will never accept you as an equal, once you let go of your idealism in this regard, trust me, it'll get easier. You'll be able to crank out those editorials in five to ten minutes, and you'll be so numb emotionally that you'll hardly cry at all.

And I'm sorry no one told you about this sooner.