_Photo by Allison Murphy_

The New York Times has published a lengthy op-ed from Patterson Hood, in which the Drive-By Truckers frontman explains his love for the South and his disdain for the Confederate flag. Much like fellow Southern rocker Warren Haynes, Hood doesn’t believe that the controversial flag is a worthy symbol of Southern pride.

The piece—titled “The South’s Heritage Is So Much More Than a Flag”—touches on a variety of topics, including Hood’s family history, the integrated studios of Memphis and Muscle Shoals, AL, the themes of Drive-By Truckers’ classic 2001 album Southern Rock Opera, and the causes of the Civil War before arriving at its conclusion, which reads:

Last month, a terrorist with a gun killed nine unarmed men and women in a church in Charleston and woke the people in our country up from sweet dreams of a postracial America, driving home just how far we still have to go. As the city mourned and tried to make sense of its grief, the State House of South Carolina still flew the rebel flag at full staff. Now the tide is turning; the state’s legislature voted to take it down from the Capitol grounds early Thursday morning, and it’s not impossible to think that other Southern states might do the same before long.

It’s high time that a symbol so divisive be removed. The flags coming down symbolize the extent to which those who cry “heritage, not hate” have already lost their argument. Why would we want to fly a symbol that has been used by the K.K.K. and terrorists like Dylann Roof? Why would a people steeped in the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible want to rally around a flag that so many associate with hatred and violence? Why fly a flag that stands for the very things we as Southerners have worked so hard to move beyond?

If we want to truly honor our Southern forefathers, we should do it by moving on from the symbols and prejudices of their time and building on the diversity, the art and the literary traditions we’ve inherited from them. It’s time to study and learn about who we are and where we came from while finding a way forward without the baggage of our ancestors’ fears and superstitions. It’s time to quit rallying around a flag that divides. And it is time for the South to — dare I say it? — rise up and show our nation what a beautiful place our region is, and what more it could become.