SLIDELL, La. – Walmart has apologized after a man from Louisiana posted a video to YouTube explaining how a local store refused to make a cake with a Confederate flag design but baked a cake featuring the ISIS battle flag. Chuck Netzhammer said he tried to order a cake featuring the image of the Confederate flag adorned with the words “Heritage Not Hate” on Thursday. The bakery denied his request, as the store, along with several retailers over the past week have announced they are banning sales of Confederate flag merchandise in the wake of the Charleston church shooting on June 17.
Later in the week, Netzhammer ordered a cake with an image of the ISIS battle flag, which the store made. In the YouTube video, Netzhammer shows the ISIS cake as well as the rejected form of the Confederate flag cake that appears to have been marked with the words “cannot do cake.” A Walmart spokesman told the Daily Caller, “We made the decision to stop selling Confederate flag related items promoting the flag’s image … For that reason we did not make the cake. [Netzhammer] brought in the other image of ISIS and really, what happened, was our associate didn’t recognize what that image was and what it meant or it wouldn’t have been made.”
Netzhammer’s cake controversy is the latest chapter in a sparked discussion surrounding the Confederate flag. Many in the south claim the flag is a symbol for southern heritage and those who fought bravely in the Civil War. The flag’s critics say the emblem is a symbol for hatred and bigotry because one of the main motivations for the south’s secession was to keep slavery legal. After the Civil War, the Confederate flag emblem was adopted by several white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan.