When asking an American about the Confederate flag, one image comes to mind: the red and blue banner with a big X covered in stars. This image immediately pops into most people’s heads, as it has been pushed as both the symbol of the Confederacy and even for the broader southern United States ever since the conclusion of the American Civil War. In recent years there has been major push-back against the use of this flag by many Americans, and for good reason.

States such as Mississippi and Georgia included this flag as a facet of their own state flag for a large portion of their histories. Other states, such as South Carolina, didn’t have the confederate flag included within their own state flag, but chose to fly the flag outside of their state capitol buildings. In 2003, Georgia was pressured into changing their state flag to not include any use of the Confederate battle flag, and more recently Mississippi was pressured to do the same.

However, despite these victories in the journey to remove these flags from places such as state icons, we are still far from getting Confederate imagery removed from all of these spaces.

While Georgia was pressured into changing their state flag in 2003, the new state flag is just as much of a symbol of the Confederacy as the old flag was. When taking a glance at the current flag, the relation to the Confederacy may not jump out at you. There is no use of crossing star patterns anywhere. One might say it looks more like the Betsy Ross flag than anything with the use of thirteen stars in a circle opposite red and white stripes.

However, when one digs a little deeper, the truth of this flag might be surprising. The red and blue flag we all know and associate with the Confederacy was the flag used by the Virginia Army during the Civil War; it was one of the main battle symbols used by Confederate soldiers during the war. However, the first official flag of the Confederate States of America, the government the southern states seceded to form, was not this flag.

The first official flag of the Confederate government was called “Stars and Bars,” which is a red, white and blue flag, with a ring of white stars and three red and white stripes. When taking a look at this flag, the resemblance to the Georgia state one starts to pop out; it is basically just the stars and bars flag of the Confederate government with the addition of a few elements.

The current Georgia state flag was designed like this intentionally, as according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, those within the Georgia state government who drafted the flag believed that, since the stars and bars flag was unknown to most people–and not usually associated with hate groups–it was a way to appease those who still wanted the state flag to be a confederate symbol without largely angering those who opposed the use of Confederate imagery. This is dangerous for many reasons, especially as more and more state governments are finally determined to be rid of any reference to the Confederacy.

Since 2000, there has been so much public outcry against the use of the battle flag, that racist supporters of the Confederacy are turning back to the stars and bars flag. It’s becoming the new way these people continue their support of the Confederacy: by using a flag with a history that is not fully understood by many Americans.

When asked to comment on this, Dr. Marcus Gallo of the John Carroll University History Department had this to say: “In 1926, the journalist H. L. Mencken wrote, ‘No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.’ That’s a little cruel, but I think we can safely rephrase it this way: no politician can endanger himself by overestimating the historical ignorance of the American public.”

If we as a nation want to remove Confederate symbols and imagery from public spaces, we all need to be more educated on these ‘Stars and Bars’ flags and other Confederate symbols. If we don’t do this, Confederate symbols will continue to hide in plain sight and the stars and bars flag will continue to be used without any opposition or question of ethicality.