Though Georgia politicians may feel they resolved the state’s issues with the Confederate battle flag when they removed the rebel emblem from the state flag in 2003, there is much Georgia can learn from South Carolina’s flag debate. After all, Georgia still has more than its share of state-sanctioned and supported Confederate memorials, tributes and holidays, including the specialty license plates bearing the Confederate flag. The current Georgia flag itself is modeled after the first national flag of the Confederacy.
I was born and raised in Columbia, S.C., a few miles from the South Carolina Statehouse where the Confederate flag has flown prominently since 1962, when the flag was first placed on top of the Statehouse dome in opposition to the civil rights movement. In 2000, after an economic boycott of the state by the NAACP, the South Carolina legislature removed the Confederate flag from the dome, but replaced it with another Confederate flag that now flies about 30 feet high in front of the Statehouse.
In South Carolina, the Confederate flag is loved and hated, and it appears now it will be rightly removed from the Statehouse. For blacks and whites, the flag debate is about more than “political correctness.” To some, the flag represents a Southern way of life — what was and is “good” about South Carolina. For others, the flag represents past and present racial injustice and inequality, and what continues to be “bad” about the state.
The controversy is partly about symbolism and history, partly about political and economic inequality, and partly about social and cultural divisions between black and white South Carolinians. For many, the Confederate flag should not be a symbol of the government, because it represents white privilege, white supremacy and white power. The Confederate flag is so important to the Ku Klux Klan, it plans to march to support keeping the flag on Statehouse grounds.
Now, South Carolina politicians have been shamed into a vote on removing the flag from Statehouse grounds. This newfound sensitivity and courage is due to Dylan Roof, a 21-year old racist and sociopath who openly worships the Confederate flag and has confessed to the premeditated shooting and murder of nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston.
During his eulogy of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of Roof’s victims, President Barack Obama provided context for how the history, meaning and legacy of the Confederate flag, embraced as a state symbol, can fuel racism and prejudice and contribute to policies and practices that cause harm to blacks — in the form of poverty, employment discrimination, racial profiling, mass incarceration, denial of voting rights and even mass murder.
The president addressed the need to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse. He also spoke candidly about racism, and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, how “we have been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present,” and how we should ask ourselves “some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career.”
On the issue of racial bias, Obama said, “maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us, even when we don’t realize it, so that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs, but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal.”
Hopefully, the leaders of South Carolina will rise to the occasion, disassociate themselves from the Confederate flag and begin addressing racial inequality and racial divisions. South Carolina is no different from Georgia and many other Southern states that must find ways to remove barriers that prevent blacks from benefiting and participating in the economic, political, and educational opportunities available to whites.
If nothing more, the tragedy in Charleston provides a lesson to the nation on the existing legacy of racial hatred towards blacks, and the need to come to terms with how our country’s past history affects our present course towards racial justice and equality.
Sam Starks is a civil and criminal trial attorney. He lives in East Atlanta.
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