Some high school students are taking issue with their principal’s decision to ban images of the Confederate battle flag on campus. They say that it’s not a symbol of hate, but rather a way for them to celebrate their “Southern heritage.”

This isn’t the first time the flag has caused controversy, but what is unusual is the particular part of the “south” these students take pride in: Southern Ontario.

Staff at Sutton District High School, on the northern tip of the Greater Toronto Area, told the Georgina Advocate that they decided to take action after seeing the flag — a favourite of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan — more and more frequently at the school.

While the school’s principal told the paper that there weren’t any specific incidents, there are a “handful of students who view it as a white pride kind of thing.”

But some students don’t agree.

“To ban this flag on account of this is basically saying that we, as mostly white humans, are the stereotype of not liking other races, which is dead wrong. We country kids are simply proud of our small-town, country ways,” Cassidy Winstone, a grade 11 student, told the Advocate.

Yes, that’s right, she thinks that banning symbols that are used by racists perpetuates the stereotype that people who like those symbols are racist.

In fact, Winstone thinks that banning the flag, which she says is just “showing our Southern pride,” might be “a bit racist in itself.”

Maybe Winstone doesn’t get it because southern Ontario isn’t exactly the South. She doesn’t live in a place where people went to war under that flag, fighting for the ability to keep slaves. She doesn’t live in a place where lynchings were carried out by people who flew that flag.

And some of her classmates agree; Wyatt Elson told the Advocate that the flag “does not represent hate, it represents heritage.”

Yes, his Southern heritage in southern Ontario. He said that “other people can support what they believe in, but I can’t. I think it is wrong.”

So what do you believe in, Elson? What does this flag suggest you believe in? Because no matter what you think it means, some people are going to think it suggests you’re a racist, even if you’re not.