This interview was supposed to run at the end of the month, but they ran it, I guess, a few days ago. In it, I mention “1999” and refer people here to my website, where there is no mention of “1999” yet. đ Details coming by the end of the month, which, ironically, was when this interview was due to run đ
I think I mention Milestone about 3,000 times. đ
This link is to Part 3, with links to the previous 2 parts.
Full disclosure: the flag doesnât bother me at all and never has. I, frankly, never associated the flag with slavery (as in, Confederate Flag = Slavery) until the news media made that association for me. Over the years, when I saw the Confederate flag, I thought âredneck,â not âracist.â Not every racist is a redneck, and not every redneck is a racist. Iâve known many rednecks and good olâ boys who were never, in my presence or reported to me outside of it, seen behaving in any way racist. They didnât care what color you were so long as you brought the beer. These guys loved their Confederate flag more as symbolic of the south than as a symbol of hatred. The redneck boys I knew thought the Ku Klux Klan were a bunch of idiots.
I agree the flag should never have been flown over the SC capitol dome (mainly as an F-U to civil rights efforts), nor did I think it should have been flown at the war memorial. But I’d have been perfectly okay with the flag displayed in a glass case at the memorial while the U.S. flag was flown overhead.
Taking that flag down will not bring back a single one of the nine victims of the Emanuel AME shooting, nor will it in any way ease the suffering of their families. Taking down the flag wonât repair the Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court gutted in 2013, wonât bring justice for the growing numbers of African Americans seemingly shot at-will by law enforcement, wonât provide access to health care or solve any of the dozens of public policy issues dividing this nation. Even worse, taking down the flag will provide some in White America with an inappropriate sense of closure, which may cause some to respond to these public policy issues, âWe gave up our flag, thatâs all you get,â as if taking the flag down actually accomplished anything. Taking down the flag only breeds resentment and suppresses racist attitudes such that, while not openly displayed, they smolder beneath the surface. The worst part about this non-plan is stigmatizing the flag makes real racial problems that much harder to see. Iâd much rather they left the flag alone; at least then I could see âem coming.
If we really wanted to strip the Confederate flag of power, weâd just stop talking about it. Weâd let it fade into obscurity as what it factually is: an icon of southern antiquity. By using the Confederate flag as a prop to avoid actually talking to each other and engaging on serious problems of society, we shame not only that flag but our own.
You know, Iâm not entirely certain this whole SAE mess isnât a free speech issue. I was neither shocked nor particularly surprised by the racist chanting, nor do I believe it was some extant incident. Like many blacks in America, I just assume this is what white folk do when weâre not looking. I donât chant anti-white stuff when whites arenât looking, but I and many of my friends are far from Emily Post when not in racially mixed company. Iâm shockedâshocked, I tell youâto discover racial slurs are bandied about behind closed doors.
Expelling two students from the University of Oklahoma for the racist chant seems, to me, not only unfair but possibly illegal. They have a right to free speech, no matter how offensive. Itâs the price we all pay in order for all of us to have the right to say whatever we want⌠right? I mean, if these guys were Nazis, would we even be talking about this?
Shutting down the fraternity was certainly a crowd-pleasing thing to do but it was the wrong lesson. It sent a terrible message and, rather than address the real problem, merely forced it back underground. America, it seems, is good at that: burying real so-cial schisms until, say, a black guy is elected president or a lesbian is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. I remain shocked and unnerved at how deep racism continues to drill into the American ideal, that such ignorance is shockingly alive and well. I tend to blame the Republican party for using racism as a political tool, thereby desensitizing the nation to such matters and bringing racism flagrantly, baldly out into the open where it is, for the most part, accepted.
Frankly, I think being exposed as idiots was punishment enough for SAE. The University of Oklahoma took a black eye over the incident, as it should: I hardly believe nobody in any position of leadership at that campus was aware of the brazenly racist attitudes of SAE.
But the University should have stood up, first and foremost, for the principles this nation was founded upon. I honestly wasnât all that offended and believe well-meaning white folks perhaps acting on my behalfâand thus treating all blacks like children incapable of expressing their own outrageâgrossly overreacted to what this was: sophomoric stupidity by a bunch of knuckleheads. In their headlong rush to defend me, us, whomever, they trampled the U.S. constitution that actually freed us in the first place.