ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 5, 1996 TAG: 9612050067
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
WHEN STROM Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform, the Confederate battle flag was his standard. Like many people, Thurmond has since changed his mind about race relations.
The grand old man of South Carolina politics, now a Republican, may be too old to have run, and recently won, re-election to the U.S. Senate. But he is wise enough to have seconded South Carolina Gov. David Beasley's call last week to lower the rebel flag from above the statehouse. Beasley wants the banner moved to a nearby Confederate memorial. Good idea.
The governor, whose great-great-great grandfather fought for the South, would have shown more courage had he proposed moving the flag before his election two years ago. Of course, then he might not have been elected. In a nonbinding referendum taken during the 1994 GOP primary, three of four Republican voters said the flag should continue flying over the Capitol.
Even so, Beasley's conversion, if belated, is brave. It has provoked predictable attacks from politicians sputtering about honor and heritage. A GOP state senator compares the first-term governor with Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister infamous for appeasement. The lawmaker cries that moving the flag "will amount to cultural genocide." The state's attorney general warns that "before long, our history will be rewritten. The children of South Carolina will be taught, in the name of political correctness, to be ashamed of their state's history."
Haven't we heard enough such windbaggery?
As a matter of principle, this newspaper would defend anyone's right to wave the Confederate flag. If people are offended, tough luck. It's a free country. Even the state of South Carolina has the right.
The question is whether, as a matter of policy, a representative government should accord the Stars and Bars official status and approval - and so deeply offend and alienate a sizable portion of the citizenry - by raising the flag over the statehouse. "Any banner we choose to fly over the Capitol," said Beasley, "should be one that everyone can claim as their own."
Never mind whether the Confederacy itself, in large part a defense of slavery, deserves celebration. Only since the early 1960s has the battle flag flown over South Carolina's statehouse. It was raised then as a symbol of hateful defiance against civil rights and desegregation. Indeed, not by chance do hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, along with most black Americans, regard the flag as a symbol of racism.
Not everyone who celebrates it is a bigot, of course. But those who revere the flag merely as an emblem of Southern heritage should welcome Gov. Beasley's proposal. Moving it to a memorial for Confederate soldiers would link it more closely to the honor of those (most of whom were not slaveowners) who fought bravely in the Civil War.
The nation, including South Carolina, continues to suffer racial wounds that need healing. Even Strom Thurmond appreciates this. And who would accuse him of betraying his heritage?
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