Every State-Sponsored Confederate Flag & Monument Should Come Down
By Shaun King
On this past Wednesday, nine amazing people were gunned down in Charleston, South Carolina by a white racist who killed them because they were black. He thought he was superior to them, and he was interested in starting a race war. The murders, one of the deadliest hate crimes against African Americans in the past 100 years, ripped the heart out of not just nine families, but out of good people all over the world.
When an attack like this happens, our country not only wants justice, we want change. It seems, though, that nothing changes. Guns, hundreds of millions of them, are still everywhere and easy to obtain. Hate, both online and off, is on the rise, and we are simply biding our time until the next mass shooting or hate crime rips our heart out again. We have absolutely no indication that even one small impediment is going to keep this cycle from staying on a constant loop.
Dylann Roof, the man who slaughtered these nine women and men, very much identified with the Confederacy. We now have a dozen photos of him holding the flag, posing with it on the license plate of his car, and standing in front of a Confederate museum. It was an enormous part of his identity.
In the wake of this horrific attack in Charleston, the presence of the Confederate Flag outside of the Statehouse and the Confederate memorials and streets named after Confederate heroes all over the state, has enraged the nation. We don’t have to look at the photos of a mass murderer to see the flag, it’s all over South Carolina and indeed all over the South — on full display — paid for and protected by the state.
For African Americans, the Confederate Flag is very much like the swastika. Its presence is deeply offensive. We would never see the swastika flown by the government of any country in the world — including Germany. One could argue that Hitler and the Nazi regime were great strategists, but we don’t see statues of him or his generals peppered throughout Berlin. One could argue, and they’d be right, that the World War was not just about the persecution of the Jews, but it was an essential part of the evil of that time, and this much is widely accepted — and respected.
African Americans have stated, ad nauseum, over and over and over again, that the Confederate Flag is both offensive and painful, yet, these pleas are ignored and it remains. It bears repeating that the Confederate Flag did not fly in South Carolina for nearly 100 years after the Civil War and wasn’t reintroduced until the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Since then it has been widely used by the KKK, Skinheads, and now by a mass murderer. In South Carolina, while the flags flew at half-staff after the Charleston shooting, the Confederate Flag at the statehouse couldn’t even be lowered. It doesn’t lower. It’s locked, doesn’t even have a pulley system, and can only be lowered, by law, for maintenance.
Symbols have power. They clearly had power and meaning for Dylann Roof. They clearly had power and meaning for Adolph Hitler. Does Germany still have struggles with anti-Semitism? Yes, but a part of overcoming who they once were has been removing the symbols of their past and replacing them with new ones.
The bottom line is this: The Confederacy, as policy, believed in slavery and Charleston was one of the largest human trafficking ports in the world. South Carolina, through and through, was a slave state and its soldiers and politicians firmly believed in keeping it that way. This is indisputable history. Even if these happen to be your ancestors and this happens to be your heritage, the same could be said for any regime in the history of the world that subjugated human beings to torture and slavery. Fifty years from now, ISIS will be someone’s heritage. One hundred years from now Al Qaeda will be someone’s heritage.
Every Confederate Flag in South Carolina and in this country that’s on forced public display — that is paid for by a state or local government — should be removed and placed into an optional indoor museum. Every statue of Confederate war heroes in the South should be placed in either cemeteries or indoor museums — and should never be forced upon the public or maintained with tax money from African Americans or other people of conscience who do not want to support such things. Public streets, which are paid for and maintained by tax dollars, by definition, should never be named after Confederate leaders — just as Germany should not have an Adolph Boulevard.
Until they are taken down, people should try to take them down themselves. We have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that any politicians are going to do this. They never do. We should take matters into our own hands, and, as an act of civil disobedience, take them down or destroy them ourselves.
Our country can never and will never heal from our painfully racist past as long as those who fought for it to remain that way are celebrated. Furthermore, by publicly celebrating those who fought to maintain racism, we create a culture where it’s only logical that what those Confederate heroes believed will be beloved as well.
Bring them down. Bring them all down!
Bring down every flag, every monument, every street sign.
Do it for Charleston.
Do it for America.
Do it now.
