“I love the Confederate flag, but I love South Carolina and its citizens more. While the flag’s existence on the statehouse grounds never offended me — and it still does not today — I can’t ignore the deep pain that it causes for many people in my state. I can’t ignore that many can’t love South Carolina as I do until the flag is removed.”
The sentiments of Byron Thomas, a senior and student senator at the University of South Carolina, where he was majoring in public relations and political science five years ago. As he related in an Op-Ed for “The Washington Post” in 2012, he became a national news story after he hung a Confederate flag in his dorm room window at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
However, Thomas, who is black, had a change of heart; originally he didn’t see his flag as racist because he saw it as celebrating his heritage. One of his ancestors he explained, Benjamin Thomas, was a black Confederate cook, and he did not want to turn his back on his service to the South.
Thomas proudly writes about his belief in free speech and how he took on the powers that be against a racist interpretation of the flag and won. However, in the wake of that summer’s shooting at a church in Charleston in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study by a 21-year-old white supremacist who told police he wanted “to start a race war,” Thomas noted he was convinced by a speech given by then Gov. Nikki Haley, where she equally acknowledged the pain and the pride that the flag held for South Carolinians.
“I don’t want to see fires, looting and violence in our streets simply because we refuse to let go of symbols of our past,” wrote Thomas.
I find it sad and ironic that a mere five years later, we are still wrestling with the same racial divide and strife in our country. This is why I believe that despite all the chaos and destruction our country has experienced over the past few weeks, one good thing may come from the restlessness and conflict if we are able to knock down more tributes to an intolerant and racist past and finally start to build a society which does not glorify or condone such imagery and symbolism.
Cut to the early summer of 2020 and in the wake of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis at the hands of racist police officers, and following massive nationwide protests, some of which have yet to subside, our collective society is having difficult discussions about race, needed police reforms, and oh yes, let’s not forget racially offensive symbols such as statutes and the Confederate flag.
While sifting through the more than 200 voice mails which, unbeknownst to me until very recently, had been left in a shared phone line at the newspaper office this week, I was interrupted by a call from a lady who has family in Lake County and who was horrified and very troubled by the fact she had just learned about the troubling racist history behind the town of Kelseyville’s name. She vowed not to spend one dollar on any of its stores or services. I did not have the time or the heart to respond to her, it’s an old battle, an ongoing effort which has not borne fruit in previous years, even though a campaign to change Kelseyville High School’s mascot from Indians to Knights did prove successful.
Despite the fact monuments of Jefferson Davis, Gen. Williams Carter Wickham and other Confederate soldiers have been toppled in Virginia and other parts of the country, and in spite of recent calls for a number of Army bases named after Confederate leaders to be renamed, a number of people on social media espouse the belief that as part of our history, such changes should not occur. The president seems to concur.
I respectfully disagree. If more than 50 percent of Native Americans surveyed state that they are offended by the Washington Redskin’s logo and moniker, then we should acquiesce to Washington D.C. Mayor Murial Bowser’s calls to change the name. Similarly, I will never figure out why people cling to a flag whose symbolism and past offends our African American neighbors. We would not be OK with flying flags with Swastika symbols emblazoned upon them because this would greatly upset Jewish Americans so why are so many people fine with upsetting and offending African Americans by flying the Confederate flag?
Racial tensions seem to be running higher than they have been in decades in our country but we must counter this anger and chaos while also taking advantage of the opportunities to make serious strides in our efforts to achieve racial harmony and equality for all citizens. This is the main reason why the Confederate flag, a long time symbol of oppression for a large sector of our population and an added element of divisiveness and unrest should be retired and never flown again.
A 15-year veteran of the journalism industry and a CSUF and Cal Poly Pomona alumnus, Ariel Carmona Jr. is the Managing Editor of the Lake County Record-Bee.
