It’s been more than two years since Dylann Roof murdered nine church-goers in Charleston, South Carolina, an act of domestic terrorism that immediately focused attention on the Confederate symbols Roof closely identified with.
Within a week of that tragedy, South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from the grounds of its state capitol and other Confederate flags around the South were removed as well. National retailers even halted the sale of Confederate-themed merchandise.
Within a couple of months, the only remaining residue of state-sanctioned Confederate flag symbolism was dear old Mississippi, where the Confederate flag is featured on the official state flag.
There has been plenty of talk about getting a new state flag, of course, but that’s where it seems to end. The Governor and the leaders of the legislature, lacking either the character or the courage to take action, have deferred to the will of the people. But no vote has been scheduled and who knows when, if ever, that will be. At the earliest, that vote won’t happen until November 2019.
This should be no surprise. Change comes slowly, if at all, in Mississippi and more times than not precipitated by outside pressures. Historically, our state has fought change, sometimes violently.
The state flag, in many ways, represents that spirit of defiance, which means the flag won’t go gentle into that good night no matter how damaging it is. Say what you will, but that flag tells us who we really are and what we really believe. We may deceive ourselves, but the world understands and takes note.
There are two main arguments standing in the way of changing the state flag: First, there is the vote on the subject in 2001 that favored keeping the flag by a 2-to-1 margin, mostly along racial lines.
What that vote tells us is that this is a racial debate, which is why many flag supporters favor a vote. They like the odds.
Second, there the suggestion that removing the flag somehow erases “history and heritage,” an absurd, yet popular, sentiment in some circles.
In that argument there is the seed for a real solution, though.
If so much of our identity and heritage as white Mississippians is intrinsically linked to the events of 150 years ago, we must agree that the identity of black Mississippians reaches back just as far and is equally relevant today.
For black Mississippians, that history of 150 years ago takes them back to the days of slavery and all the injustices that accompanied it.
So how do we honor the history of both white and black Mississippians alike in our state flag?
By giving a nod to history, of course.
Keep the flag (yea, white folks!) and impose an additional income tax on every white worker, money that would be given to black Mississippians as reparation payments for the unpaid labor their honored ancestors provided as a condition of their bondage.
Now, I know the idea of reparations is terribly unpopular among many people who believe blacks should “just get over slavery” even though they would bristle at the thought that they themselves should “just get over the Confederacy” and fail to note the irony.
True, there no slaves walking around our state these days. There are no Confederate heroes, either. It’s a wash, at best.
So if we want to keep the flag to honor one set of ancestors, we should be willing to pay the price as a means of honoring the other. Nothing could be more fair.
Of course, there is another less costly solution for what to do about the flag.
We could take it down and “just get over it.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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