You’re right about the Confederate battle flag — I owned one myself growing up in the Delta about halfway between Indianola and Cleveland.

But to your larger point, there’s a quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that applies:

“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.”

Every White I knew growing up there — including my family and myself — were racist…but every one of us would have been greatly offended if we were called racist. We simply didn’t recognize our racism for what it was.