Southern Culture On Display: Boiled Peanuts and a Confederate Flag
There’s a church and a cemetery about half a mile from my house in Georgia. I drive by it all the time. An American and Confederate flag fly side-by-side, sending a clear message, but maybe not what the people who put them up think it does.
One weekend, the church held a drive-through prayer. A sign was posted out front, and a little tent with a few volunteers was set up. My husband and I drove past, and he looked across the street and said, “What if my wife needed prayer? Would you pray for her?
The silence was all the response we needed.
When Peanuts Unify Us Better Than Flags
Right next to the cemetery, a woman sold boiled peanuts from a roadside setup in front of that same Confederate flag. She had a folding table and a handwritten sign advertising four or five flavors. One car after another pulled over to line up. The line spilled onto the road, holding up traffic.
And here’s what got me.
It wasn’t just locals showing up or a specific group of people. It was everybody: Black families, Asian families, white folks, and Spanish-speaking people. It looked like a slice of our true community lined up in front of that flag to get something hot, salty, and Southern.
It was so surreal that I had to laugh. You’ve got people praying under that flag, and across the street, people from all over the world are buying snacks. No one said a word, stormed off, or even looked uncomfortable. They just stood in line and waited for their turn.
The South Can Surprise You
The Confederate flag is a symbol I have no love for. I know what it means and the brutal history of enslavement behind it. But I also know that not everyone sees the same thing when they look at it. Some haven’t thought about it long enough to hold an opinion worth defending.
Living in the South, I’ve learned that symbols don’t always match the people standing beneath them. I’ve had to learn not to meet someone and let that symbol be the only thing I see.
That takes effort and discipline. Some days I manage it. Some days I don’t.
Food and Music Bring Us Together
Food has a way of cutting through tension, and so does music. You show up, you eat, you listen, you remember something you’d forgotten. That peanut stand, as odd as it was, was a place where people came together without having to explain themselves. No one needed to justify why they were there. They were just hungry.
Personally, I don’t like boiled peanuts. I’m from New Jersey and prefer roasted peanuts out of a shell. But I can respect what they mean to those who love them. That stand was a small, strange example of something bigger: a place people gather even when everything around them suggests they shouldn’t.
How to See What’s Really There
The boiled peanut stand didn’t make the flag disappear. It certainly didn’t rewrite our history books. But it did show me something I might’ve missed if I hadn’t been paying attention.
Southern culture is full of contradiction: grace alongside cruelty or a warm welcome layered over a polite snub. These themes play out in barbecue joints, gas stations, and school pickup lines. But a place that confuses you can also teach you something, if you let it.
I’m not asking anyone to excuse symbols that cause harm. But what would happen if we noticed how the world sometimes defies our expectations? What if we stood still long enough to see who’s in line with us? Imagine a world where we see each other as humans.
That’s where the true stories get told: in the in-between spaces where people line up for peanuts.
Director of Marketing And Business Development at Shai.Health | Advocate for social impact, Revenue Cycle Management | Startup Mentor | Medical Coding and Billing
2moWhat a great observation.
Independent Financial Coach & Ramsey Preferred Money Coach; Executive Assistant to COO; Property Manager
2moNio I'm with you