Photo via @tiktok_hates_me__
June 11, 2021, 2:03 pm
A TikTok video went viral this week for showing a white Southern woman and self-identified “redneck” cutting down a Confederate flag and lighting in on fire behind text condemning the flag as racist and apologizing for ever flying it.
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The video gained over two million views on TikTok alone as people praised the woman, identified as Danielle, for learning and evolving rather than digging her heels into white supremacy as so many have done when learning the pro-slavery origins of this flag.
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“I’m sorry if I ever showed I was ‘racist’ from a flag,” the overlay text reads. “We burnt it tonight! I’m sorry our culture taught us this was ok, it’s not. I’m white, I’m redneck but never racist. RIP to this racist flag.”
Of course, there are many more ways to be racist than flying the Confederate flag, and we white people may never be able to entirely unlearn our subconscious racism after growing up in a country where white supremacy creeps into every aspect of culture. However, it’s clear that Danielle is trying, and the anti-racist people in the video’s comments are overwhelmingly positive, with some expressing surprise to see anything like this coming out of the U.S. South.
“Oh my god I’m shocked,” said one TikTok user. “Good job! You’re being the change our world needs!”
In follow-up videos addressing some of the comments, Danielle says she believes that most people growing up in the South have no idea about the actual history of the Confederate flag.
“I never knew. Never,” she said. “And everybody’s like, ‘oh, it wasn’t a big thing until recently,’ yeah, but it’s a big thing now.”
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“We were never taught right.”
Danielle has further demonstrated her willingness to learn in additional videos addressing comments. In one, she reveals that many of the white people in her area are claiming that white people are now the minority in the U.S., and another highlights a statistic saying that a full 76 percent of U.S. residents are white. This shows just how successful right-wing propaganda and fearmongering over the increase in the population of people of color has been, which can be traced back to the explicitly white supremacist “white replacement” conspiracy theory.
Though TikTok gave Danielle a platform to demonstrate her active learning on the issue, it is also not helping anti-racist efforts in general. In yet another video, she reveals that the social media site removed a second video of her burning another Confederation flag, saying that it was flagged as “dangerous acts and hate speech.”
Thankfully, her original video has remained up, as has the one of her husband tearing a Confederate flag in half.
*First Published: June 11, 2021, 2:03 pm
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