Charleston Shooting Reignites Debate About Confederate Flag

I don't care about the Confederate Flag. I think it's a kind of scary emblem when I see it displayed on redneck pickup trucks, and what not. But folks from the South routinely speak about the symbolism and heritage. Stogie at Saberpoint had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. He speaks often eloquently about that heritage, but he's no racist. His family is multicultural in fact. So it's an extremely complicated issue.

If you're on the left it's an easy call because the Confederate Flag is supposedly the ultimate symbol of racial oppression. Ta-Nehisi Coates posted an emotional and overwrought harangue against it earlier, at the Atlantic, "Take Down the Confederate Flag — Now." That's just race-bait for the hateful demons of the regressive left's fever swamps.

Still, lots of good black folk down in South Carolina are pained at this image, regular folks, holding down jobs and holding together families. I imagine they'd like to see it go.

In any case, the New York Times reports, FWIW, "Charleston Shooting Reignites Debate About Confederate Flag":

On Thursday, hours after a white gunman killed nine people in a black church in Charleston, S.C., a Confederate flag continued to fly over the grounds of the state’s Capitol.

The Supreme Court ruled the same day that Texas did not violate the First Amendment by refusing to allow the flag on its license plates.

The conflict over the banner of the Confederacy has been raging for decades between those who feel it is a symbol of free speech, and others who see it as a symbol of white supremacy. But with a photo emerging of Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old suspect in the Charleston church shootings, posing in front of a car with Confederate plates, the debate has been reignited on social media and beyond about whether the flag should be displayed, and whether politicians should continue to defend the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage.

Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a Republican, and the state’s Republican governor, Nikki R. Haley, are both drawing criticism for their views on the flag. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mr. Sanford called the idea of removing the flag a “Pandora’s box” and a “complex issue within our state.”

Ms. Haley, who on Friday called for Mr. Roof to face the death penalty, was also facing criticism for referring to the flag as a “sensitive issue” but refusing to remove it in the past.

A Haley spokesman told ABC that use of the Confederate flag — seen flying high in the South Carolina capital while other flags flew at half-staff — could not be altered without approval from the state Legislature.

Cornell William Brooks, national president of the N.A.A.C.P., said on Friday that those who said the flag was “merely a symbol of years gone by” had it all wrong. The flag, he said, is an “emblem of hate” that should be banished from public life.

“That symbol has to come down,” he said, speaking at a news conference in Charleston. “That symbol must be removed from our state Capitol.”

Several hashtags, #takedownthatflag, #takeitdown and #ConfederateTakeDown, were also being used Friday on Twitter as an informal campaign to prompt South Carolina politicians to remove the flag.

Elsewhere, writers and academics found fault in the argument that the flag was meant to preserve a Southern way of life. In a post for The Atlantic titled “Take Down the Confederate Flag — Now,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that the argument that the flag preserves a heritage of racist behavior was what motivated Mr. Roof to attack black people.

“More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded — with human sacrifice,” Mr. Coates wrote.

Edward E. Baptist, a professor at Cornell University who specializes in the history of slavery, said in a series of posts on Twitter that the flag had been used as justification for attacks on blacks since the Civil War...

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