Kid Rock Hasn't Used Confederate Flag Since 2010: Publicist

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Kid Rock stopped using the Confederate battle flag five ago and activists demanding the Detroit country-hip-hop-rock superstar renounce the embattled symbol are “protesting something he’s not even doing,” his publicist said Wednesday.

A turning point for Rock was a 2011 demonstration in which the embattled symbol was burned in protest outside the Cobo Center as Rock was receiving the Detroit chapter of the NAACP’s Great Expectations Award, publicist Nick Stern told the Detroit Free Press.

“That was the impetus,” Stern said. “Since then, he’s never flown it again.”

Rock began using the flag at his concerts in the early 2000s as a symbol of Southern rock and rebellion, he told the Free Press in 2002.

After the 2011 protest outside the NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner, Rock said he “never flew the flag with hate in my heart,” and that his use of the flag had nothing to do with his attitudes about African-Americans. “I love America, I love Detroit, and I love black people,” he said.

Rock hasn’t publicly spoken, except through a profane message read on Fox News by host Megyn Kelly. His publicist said Wednesday that the message – “Please tell the people protesting they can kiss my a**” – was directed specifically at the Detroit activists, and he was not saying that he planned to fly the flag in the face of increasing criticism that it is a racist symbol.

Related:

• Activists Want Kid Rock to Abandon Confederate Flag
• Kid Rock’s Profane Message to Confederate Flag Protesters
• GM, Activists to Meet over Kid Rock’s Confederate Flag

Williams, the leader of the Detroit chapter of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s NAN, told the Free Press his group is undeterred, and he believes the remark was directed at Confederate battle flag protesters nationwide.

“We’re not going to let off of this,” he told the newspaper.

Williams and other activists expected to meet with General Motors officials this week over the sponsorship by its Chevrolet brand of First Kiss: Cheap Date Tour.

In a statement Wednesday, GM said it agreed to meet with Williams “to better understand his concerns.”

“We need to let some open and constructive dialogue occur as a first step, and we’ll go from there,” according to the statement.

Others Musicians Quick to Renounce Flag

Kid Rock isn’t the first musician to jettison the flag.

Another Detroit rocker, Ted Nugent, told WWJ/CBS Detroit that he wouldn’t raise the Confederate flag at his concerts or wear it on his clothing, though he said he thought the issues surrounding the emblem were more about political correctness than anything else.

“I have to acknowledge – I think we all do– there’s an awful lot of information, an awful lot of people out there that believe the stars and bars, the Confederate flag, represents something heroic and something worth standing up for,” Nugent told the radio station.

Rocker Tom Petty was more resolute and contrite in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, saying using the symbol to promote his Southern Accents tour in 1985 “was a downright stupid thing to do.”

“... People just need to think about how it looks to a black person. It’s just awful. It’s like how a swastika looks to a Jewish person. It just shouldn’t be on flagpoles,” he said, concluding the interview:

“Beyond the flag issue, we’re living in a time that I never thought we’d see. The way we’re losing black men and citizens in general is horrific What’s going on in society is unforgivable. As a country, we should be more concerned with why the police are getting away with targeting black men and killing them for no reason. That’s a bigger issue than the flag. Years from now, people will look back on today and say, “You mean we privatized the prisons so there’s no profit unless the prison is full?” You’d think someone in kindergarten could figure out how stupid that is. We’re creating so many of our own problems.”

In a biographical essay in The New York Times Magazine, the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, who was born and raised in Alabama, called for a reclamation of the South’s heritage without the controversial symbol.

“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,” he wrote. “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.”

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Photo via Flickr