My relationship with my community has always been ambivalent.

Being in the newspaper business, I moved to Ironton 20 years ago because in my industry, you go to where the papers are. Nothing called me there from Columbus except the promise of a paycheck.

In six years of working for the Ironton Tribune, I learned a lot about the town, some good and some bad. Same goes for the people. I like my street and my neighbors, being close to my kids’ school, stuff like that.

And I’ve had my share of gripes about how the city is governed, how the schools are run, taxes are assessed, streets cleaned, crime investigated. Admitted, I’m a habitual grouch. And you could say I’m more talk than action — my record of civic engagement is spotty at best.

Take all the above as evidence that I don’t make the following statement lightly, or from hometown pride.

Something happened a week or so before Memorial Day that made me proud of Ironton, proud to say I live there.

Everyone knows the Memorial Day parade is the centerpiece of the Ironton calendar. My home is on the parade route, so it’s a focal point for me, too.

But as stirring as are the music and the uniforms and the 21-gun salutes, today I’m proud of Ironton for what was not in the parade.

Namely, the Stars and Bars of the Confederate battle flag.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, a so-called “heritage” organization whose members claim descent from Confederate soldiers, asked the parade committee for permission to march and fly the banner. The committee, to its everlasting credit, said no.

The Confederate flag has its millions of adherents, some of whom venerate it more than others. Let us not begrudge them their symbols; perhaps they honestly believe the banner commemorates nothing more than their forefathers’ devotion to home and duty.

To many millions more, however, the flag holds a clear message of hate, oppression and exclusion. They see the banner that flew over the fight to deny freedom and equality — and sometimes life itself — to their ancestors.

But the association is not limited to the Civil War. Racist hate groups have adopted the Stars and Bars for their purposes. Where you see the Ku Klux Klan, you will certainly see the Confederate flag.

The “heritage, not hate,” argument does not hold up, I think. The heritage is bound up so entirely with the history of the South — the agrarian society fueled by slavery, Reconstruction and the festering of North-South strife, and the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.

Certainly racism is not exclusive to the South. Yet as an institution, racism permeated and poisoned the region more thoroughly and lastingly than any other.

That is why, I think, the Stars and Bars have become so inextricably tied to racism. There is no use in protesting that one reveres it solely as a tribute to one’s ancestors.

What about those who are descended from slaves? To have carried the banner in the parade would have dishonored their ancestors, whether intended or not.

Much has been made of the status of the Confederate veteran, considered an American soldier to be honored with those who remained true to the Union and to all the following generations in uniform. Why not, goes the argument, allow them the dignity of commemoration beneath their own flag?

The answer is simple: If they were American fighting men, worthy of Memorial Day honors, then that honor should be bestowed beneath the American flag.

Kudos to the parade committee for recognizing and heading off what would have been a divisive element to an event that brings the entire Tri-State community together.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.