"Something has been weighing pretty heavily on me the past few days. I have had a few small discussions on the issue, but haven’t gotten too far into it. I wanted to share this, not for attention, but because I thought it needed to be done.
"It’s no big secret to my friends that I love to hunt, fish, camp and do pretty much anything outdoors. I have always considered myself to be a country boy stuck in the city. One of the ways that I used to show pride for my lifestyle was wearing t-shirts with the Confederate/ Rebel flag on them. In high school, I even had a bumper sticker on my truck that read “Keep It Flying”. I had grown up seeing the flag regularly, and although I had seen it used in negative ways on occasion, I chose to accept the “Heritage not Hate” and “Pride not Prejudice” interpretation of the flag. If you had asked me back then, I would’ve told you that it was a symbol of southern pride and had nothing to do with racism.
"I was raised pretty close to downtown Nashville and grew up with kids of all races with all kinds of backgrounds. I played baseball, basketball and football on teams where sometimes whites were minorities. I am very thankful for this. As I continue to grow and learn, I realize that we tend to fear things just because we don’t understand them. Because of where and how I was raised, I never feared people of other color or background. I was able to realize that we are all the same underneath. I have had white friends, black friends, Asian friends, Middle Eastern friends, Latino friends, Christian friends, Muslim friends, Atheist friends, etc. Thankfully, I have never had a racist bone in my body."
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