Posted by Elaine Magliaro
This is an editorial cartoon by Dan Wasserman that was published in The Boston Globe on June 18th. Wasserman posted it on his Twitter account the same day under the heading “Charleston shooting backdrop.”
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Tear Down That Flag: Republican Lawmaker Pushes Bill To Toss Confederate Flag From S.C. State House
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2015/06/20/3672176/republican-lawmaker-pushing-bill-remove-confederate-flag-state-house/
Excerpt:
And then: on Friday, Republican South Carolina State Representative Norman “Doug” Brannon announced that he plans to sponsor legislation to take down the Confederate flag from the front of the state Capitol. As he told Chris Hayes on MSNBC, “I had a friend die Wednesday night for no reason other than he was a black man. Sen. Pinckney was an incredible human being. I don’t want to talk politics but I’m going to introduce the bill for that reason.”
Brannon is one of the few high-profile Republican legislators not only to speak out against the Confederate flag’s display at the State House but, in doing so, to acknowledge the flag as a symbol of hate and the murders as a hate crime. Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham declined to attribute Roof’s actions to the racist implications of the Stars and Bars (“It’s him… not the flag.“) and asserted Charleston’s right to keep the flag on display: “It works here, that’s what the State House agreed to do. You could probably visit other places in the country near some symbol that doesn’t quite strike you right.”
Reblogged this on rennydiokno.com.
It’s a step in the right direction. What a terrible sight for black southerners to see daily. That southern whites hang on to this hateful symbol doesn’t speak well for them.
A final word about the City of Charleston, S.C. It happens to be one of my favorite Cities in the country and I’ve spent time there too many times to count. Beautiful City, great food and in my experience nice people. It’s just too damned bad the City is located in the midst of a cluesless State.
The Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy — and it always has
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/20/8818093/confederate-flag-south-carolina-charleston-shooting
Excerpt:
The American flag and the South Carolina state flag are flying at half-staff at the state’s capitol after a gunman murdered nine people at a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME church Wednesday night.
The Confederate flag on the capitol grounds, on the other hand, is still flying at its usual height, 30 feet in the air, lighted at night. And it isn’t going anywhere. A compromise that took the flag down from over the statehouse in 2000 did all it could to make sure it didn’t budge any further from the seat of state government. Moving it requires a two-thirds vote from the state’s general assembly.
A mass murder apparently motivated by white supremacy has sparked yet another debate about what the Confederate flag really symbolizes. Yet the facts of the matter are clear: from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Movement, the flag has always been about white supremacy. It’s always been embraced hardest when white Southerners felt most threatened. Fights over the South Carolina Capitol’s Confederate flag have been going on for more than 40 years.
But the flag’s meaning hasn’t really changed since the Civil War. The only thing that has is how the rest of the country sees the cause it represents…
The flag was based on the saltire, a common flag symbol sometimes called the Southern Cross. As historian John Coski writes in The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem, Southerners weren’t shy about enlisting the design in the cause of white supremacy. In 1863, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger wrote that the flag’s Southern Cross pointed to “the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave” — the Confederacy’s hoped-for expansion of slavery into Latin America.
Why Is the Flag Still There?
After 150 years, there may finally be enough support in South Carolina to consign the Confederate banner to the past.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/why-is-the-flag-still-there/396431/
Excerpt:
On Saturday, Charleston shooter Dylann Roof was linked to a website with a rambling manifesto of hate, illustrated with dozens of pictures. Several showed him posing with a Confederate battle flag.
The flags of the United States and of South Carolina, atop the Capitol dome in Columbia, were lowered to half-staff last week in the wake of the Charleston shootings. The Confederate battle flag flying on the Capitol grounds was not.
“It’s a shame that those people were killed, and we all greatly regret that incident,” a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans told The New York Times, “and we were upset that anybody would try to tie people who are proud of their heritage to an act like that.”
But, of course, Roof understood the symbolism of the flag he waved only all too well. When South Carolina seceded in 1860, it issued a Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina. It glossed over states’ rights. It did not mention the tariff. South Carolina was seceding, it explained, due to the “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,” and the election of a president who believed “that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
I am not familiar with the term “Southern Cross” except as specific reference to the Confederate battle flag.
The saltire symbol has nothing to do with the southern states of the US, other than Confederate flag designers decided to use the Cross of St. Andrew for the flag design. Furthermore, it looks nothing like the Southern Cross constellation seen on the Australian flag. The word ‘Saltire’ means, “A cross with diagonal bars of equal length.”
When Andrew, one of Jesus’ Apostles, was sentenced to death, he requested the Romans crucify him on an X-shaped cross. He felt unfit to be crucified on the same shaped cross as Jesus. The martyred Andrew was canonized as St. Andrew, thus the Cross of St. Andrew.
The first mention of the Cross of St. Andrew as a symbol appears in the 9th Century, when King Óengus led his troop of Scots and Picts into battle against the Angles. Before the battle, he claimed to have seen a cloud formation in the shape of St. Andrew’s Cross in the sky. He took that as an omen, and indeed, did win the battle.
In 1180, the Scots adopted this symbol as an emblem. A white saltire cross on a blue field, representing the white clouds Óengus saw against a blue sky, was first hoisted as the Scottish flag in 1512. Today, the saltire cross flag of Scotland is the oldest national flag in the world.
What influenced the shooter? More info at the article. Too many links for me to rewrite.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/21/dylann-roof-manifesto-charlston-shootings-republicans
excerpt:
The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum.
Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks – including that black people were “the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the history of the world” – were posted online in his name.
“increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery,”
Specifically, some of the northern states were passing laws that countered federal law regarding the return of runaway slaves. Federal law required the slaves to be returned. The states said, no, slaves need not be returned, an example of states’ rights. So it seems that if northern states can exercise state’s rights in countering federal law, the southern states could exercise state’s rights by seceding. Although federal law forbid the import of more slaves, this was not a problem in that Virginia had determined that its economy would be well served by breeding and selling selling to all comers.
John Oliver’s take on the loser battle flag. I’m gratified to see the number of vilifying memes being generated on this piece of trash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=146&v=8L6GDynW4zU
Well, a comment of mine is lost in the wilderness… I’ll summarize the point, badly- for times sake, only in order to advance the awareness of this book
Contrary to the point apparently made by the Sen “it was the shooter not the flag”, I say it is the flag – and the deep truths it represents that help spawn a shooter. A deep shadow of the American beginnings that are , like so many unexploded munitions in the fields of France, working their way to the surface and exploding.
It is the flag, and the ideas it represents that is indeed the point.
And to be overwhelmed with endless stories about the psychosis of the shooter is to miss the deeper point.
But that is who we are. A people who are happy to not know, so we don’t have to remember from whence we came. And so we will ever be perplexed by the seeming random events of violence that keep exploding on the national consciousness. And our response will ever be muddled and ever missing the point because of how difficult it is to understand that the wealth and the power of America is largely built on slavery, in various forms. Then, and now.
The book cited above attempts to reveal a little bit more of this shadow side.
Other aspects of this issue have been well articulated. I wanted to add this one into the mix as well.
Nikki Haley To Call For Confederate Flag To Be Removed From South Carolina Capitol: Reports
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/south-carolina-confederate-flag_n_7637644.html
I think this short article sums it up rather well.
“South Carolina Refuses To Remove Confederate Flag From Capitol Trailer”
http://www.theonion.com/article/south-carolina-refuses-remove-confederate-flag-cap-50725
First on CNN: Walmart to stop selling Confederate flag merchandise
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/confederate-flag-walmart-south-carolina/index.html?sr=fb062215walmartflags730pVODtopLink
Excerpt:
(CNN)Walmart, the country’s largest retailer, will remove all Confederate flag merchandise from its stores, the company told CNN Monday.
The announcement is the latest indication that the flag, a symbol of the slave-holding South, has become toxic in the aftermath of a shooting last week at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. Gov. Nikki Haley announced in a Monday afternoon news conference that she supports removing the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds.
Walmart.com currently carries the Confederate flag as well as attire featuring the flag’s design, such as T-shirts and belt buckles.
“We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer. We have taken steps to remove all items promoting the confederate flag from our assortment — whether in our stores or on our web site,” said Walmart spokesman Brian Nick. “We have a process in place to help lead us to the right decisions when it comes to the merchandise we sell. Still, at times, items make their way into our assortment improperly — this is one of those instances.”
The surprisingly uncomplicated racist history of the Confederate flag
http://theweek.com/articles/562004/surprisingly-uncomplicated-racist-history-confederate-flag
Excerpt:
In the wake of a horrific mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a young white man with an apparent history of racism is accused of killing nine black people during Bible study at a church, many are calling for the removal of the Confederate flag on statehouse grounds in South Carolina’s capital. But the politics are tricky for Republicans in this conservative state. Last year, six in 10 South Carolinians said the flag should stay.
Now, the space between one’s ears can get pretty easily fogged whenever politics mixes with race. So let’s clarify some of the basic history about the Confederate Battle Flag, more accurately known as the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia.
The flag has no meaning “regardless” of politics, or above politics; its heritage is not exempt from history. Anyone can interpret anything any way they want, but if they claim historical sanction for their interpretation, then they’d best be accurate. And in that sense, history is clear: There is no revolutionary cause associated with the flag, other than the right for Southern states to determine how best to subjugate black people and to perpetuate slavery…
But never did the flag represent some amorphous concept of Southern heritage, or Southern pride, or a legacy that somehow includes everything good anyone ever did south of the Mason-Dixon line, slavery excluded.
Fast-forward about 100 years, past thousands of lynchings in the South, past Jim Crow and Plessy v. Ferguson, past the state-sanctioned economic and political subjugation of black people, and beyond the New Deal that all too often gave privileges to the white working class to the specific exclusion of black people.
In 1948, Strom Thurmond’s States’ Rights Party adopted the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia as a symbol of defiance against the federal government. What precisely required such defiance? The president’s powers to enforce civil rights laws in the South, as represented by the Democratic Party’s somewhat progressive platform on civil rights.