*A black couple in Atlanta fired an independent contractor they hired after he pulled up to their home with a giant Confederate flag affixed to his truck.
Footage from the family’s Ring security camera shows a white male getting out of his vehicle and walking toward the flag as Allison Brown comes outside with her husband, Zeke.
“Hi, you know what I do apologize. I know you’ve come from a very long way but we’re going to use someone else,” Brown is heard saying in the video, Daily Mail reports.
Zeke, who is standing beside her then says, “She’s upset with the flag.”
“No, I’m beyond upset with the flag,” Brown makes clear.
The contractor is then heard telling Brown that he “can take it down.”
“No, you don’t need to take it down. You continue to believe what you need to believe sir, but no, I cannot pay you for your service,” she said.
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The man then gets back into his truck and leaves — with the massive flag flapping in the wind as he drives away.
Allison tells Yahoo Lifestyle, “I didn’t want to be the ‘angry black woman’ but I wanted him to learn and feel that bottom-line loss,” she says. “You don’t go to Germany and wave the Nazi flag. It’s the same thing.”
Zeke also noted that he and the contractor, named Michael, chatted over the course of three days on Facebook messenger about the work he was being hired to do.
“He hadn’t been disrespectful prior, so seeing the flag did not fit my preconceptions,” he says. “The flag was absurd — I had to walk back into the house to calm myself down.”
After Michael left, he messaged Zeke saying, “I didn’t know the flag offended y’all.”
In screenshots of the conversation shared with Yahoo Lifestyle, Zeke replied, “Yes, it is extremely offensive to anyone of color. I understand it is part of American history, but that flag stood for a time in history where people such as myself had a very bad way of life…Micheal, I hope this small interaction causes you to do a little research on how several Americans feel about the Confederacy. I know it’s part of history, so is Nazi Germany…”
Zeke hopes firing Michael will “save him from this way of thinking,” adding “I wanted that flag off my property — as one of the few black families in our subdivision, what would the neighbors think of a Confederate symbol in our driveway?”
Meanwhile, Michael tells Yahoo Lifestyle that he is a proud “redneck” and that the flag is symbolic for the Fourth of July.
“My little siblings bought it from a flea market,” he says. “I don’t support slavery and neither do my siblings. But I am not going to take it down when my siblings asked me to fly it. If [the family] wants to take offense, they can.”