Take Down That Flag

After a young man with white supremacist leanings allegedly shot and killed nine people in a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday, virtually all the federal and state flags flew at half-staff — with one glaring exception: the Confederate flag that is permanently affixed to a 30-foot flagpole on the Capitol grounds in Columbia, S.C.

The Confederate flag is like an inkblot test: People see different things when they look at it. Some see it as a symbol of the South’s noble heritage; others as a memento of hatred and oppression. The latter are much closer to the truth. It is time for sensible people to strike that flag and store this racist relic in the dustbin of history.

The flag on the Capitol grounds in Columbia makes the case. It doesn’t date from the Civil War; it was run up over the Capitol in 1962, as the civil rights movement was gaining steam. The flag isn’t about the glory of the Lost Cause as much as it is about fighting racial desegregation.

Black people know this, which is why they, business leaders and others lobbied to get the flag off the Capitol dome. In a compromise in 2000 that pleased no one, the flag was taken off the dome and placed at a Confederate soldiers memorial on the Capitol grounds. It can’t be lowered to half-staff, and only the legislature can remove it.

And that is what the lawmakers should do, and not just because one of the Charleston victims was a state senator.

There are doubtless many Southerners who feel the Confederate flag is a pure symbol of heritage and wish to display it to honor the Confederate dead. But they must understand that other people view it differently. White supremacist terrorists may see it as justifying their warped world view. When South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said, “We’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another,” she might consider looking out the window.

But for African Americans and many others, the flag is a symbol of hate and violent oppression. It was carried into battle to preserve the institution of slavery, and brought back to fight desegregation. There’s not much good to be gleaned from that. It is hard to imagine that many modern German states want to fly the Nazi flag to remind them of the good old days.

The Confederate flag gained a regrettable chic some years ago, perhaps from the car in the “Dukes of Hazzard” television show. It became a cool thing to hang in your dorm room. It’s not clear what black students or their families thought of it.

In any event, it’s time for everyone to put them away, voluntarily. A Confederate flag is one step up from a Ku Klux Klan sheet. There aren’t any “sons” of Confederate veterans today, there are great-great grandsons. The war is long over. In the modern multicultural, multinational world, the only place for the old flag is a museum.