By James Wilson
There was a terrible massacre at Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charlestown, South Carolina. It was the sick act of an evil little man named Dylann Roof who spewed his racist venom all over the internet and wimped out his threat to take his own life after slaughtering the innocent. To make it worse, he actually attended the Bible Study he had targeted, leaping to the attack when his theology was challenged by a leader. He said – before opening fire on one victim – that he had to do it because her kind were raping his women and taking over the country. So far the most creative solution offered has been to take down the Confederate flag from public buildings and monuments.
Don’t get me wrong. At the risk of being mega blunt, that flag is a flag of defeat. It is symbolizes rebellion, anarchy, and rich slaveholders conning hundreds of thousands of non-slave holding Southerners to fight and die for their wealth. That wealth consisted of the brutalized men, women and children whose only mistake was being born black. I have lived in the South and when they speak of the late war of the Northern aggression they do not smile. There is no excuse for flying this flag from publicly funded sites. I do not believe in forcing private parties to speak as I think – and the flag at this point is a free speech issue – but I do believe in ostracizing anyone clueless enough to think it cool to have a Confederate flag on their car or anywhere else. Flaggers – get over yourselves.
A little history is only marginally instructive. Numbers of right wing pundits are crying foul because Democrats are trying to bully Republicans into removing the flags from public places. The pundits contend it was Democrats who installed the flags and Democrats who gave us Jim Crow in the first place and they – those hypocritical Democrats – should take the blame for the whole flag mess.
They are correct, but what is the use of yammering, “We didn’t do it; those other guys did it.” Nicki Haley – Republican Governor of South Carolina – was the first to remove that flag from its position over the capitol. How about acknowledging her courage – courage no Democrat has shown – and moving on instead of playing childish blame games? And how about acknowledging while we are at it that the murdered Christians in that church were not murdered over a flag? They were killed because of hatred and our task should be to take positive steps to address that hatred in ways that do not generate further hatred. Take the flags down, but don’t be so foolish as to imagine their elimination impacts the problem.
Reality is there have been no riots in Charlestown. There has been no ground set apart for the race baiters to stand upon as they did in Ferguson and New York City and Baltimore. This peace has been accepted despite the fact the shootings in Charlestown are the clear fruit of the ugliest racism imaginable. The difference is in leaders like Governor Haley and Pastor/Senator Pinckney who gave his life as a martyr. They stand together to say that an evil whack job like Dylann Roof may roam our streets but we will not oppose his kind by becoming his kind.
Roof indulged in the worst kind of tokenism. He opened fire on the one hundred- ninety-third anniversary of the lynching of suspected slave rebels that included one of the founders of Emanuel Church. There were one hundred-fifty-four church arsons between 1991 and 96; they paved the way for the Church Arson Protection Act. But in Charlestown people have decided not to go down the path of tokenism. They have decided to talk and weep and work together. The Roofs of the world lose.
And next time perhaps people of all colors will take it seriously when a hatemonger posts his evil intentions on social media and his web site. Perhaps he will be stopped in his tracks and it will not cost the blood of the martyrs to end his evil. Perhaps the next Dylann Roof will lose earlier. But the equally moronic tokenism of taking down Confederate flags and calling that a way to address racism is not the way.
Don’t get me wrong. There is no excuse for flying a Confederate flag anywhere. Take them down. Then let’s get real about race. Let’s show genuine respect for Dr. King’s dream about content of character trumping color of skin. And let’s show the race baiters the left foot of fellowship.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
