Diversion and Distraction: Flagging Down ‘Progress’ in South Carolina
And now the nation is embroiled in a debate over whether the Confederate flag should be removed from the grounds of South Carolina’s statehouse and other governmental buildings and properties.
It’s a diversion and distraction from the matter that America for centuries has refused to address, says Leid Stories: white supremacy.
It was what informed the design of the “battle flag” in 1863 to galvanize the 13-state Confederacy’s fight “to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race,” as the flag’s designer, William T. Thompson, explained. It was the motivation for Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old gunman who massacred nine people attending a prayer and bible-study meeting last Wednesday at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
Leid Stories discusses the intentional effort to avoid the reality America has known and lived for hundreds of years.