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7/03/00 12:10 p.m.
A Battle Lost, A War Won?
The beginning of the end of the NAACP’s war against southern heritage.

By Michael Graham, political columnist and talk radio host in SC

atching the screaming, shirtless rednecks waving misspelled posters in protest of the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s statehouse dome Saturday, all I could think was “I’m gonna miss them.”

Thanks to a single act of legislative reason, the flag kooks and their race-baiting opponents from the NAACP are both about to become as relevant as an abacus in Silicone Valley. The day of the extremists is done.

More on the NAACP in a moment, but first a comment on what had to be the worst day in the history of Redneckendom since they found Elvis’s body on the washroom floor: On July 1st in South Carolina, at the stroke of midnight, every video poker machine in the state was unplugged, and a $3 billion industry which was particularly efficient at removing low-income, poorly education South Carolinians from their weekly paychecks was shut down.

Exactly twelve hours later, under a bright, noon sun, many of the same angry rednecks chased out of the local “Video Lounge and Truck Stop” the night before gathered in Columbia to watch their beloved Confederate flag removed from the state house dome.

These people — ignorant, obnoxious and angry — represent an extreme in the ongoing debate about the South and its icons. At the other extreme, the NAACP which has removed itself from the arena of reason on the issue of the Confederate flag.

Watching these two groups in Columbia Saturday demonstrated how dependent they are on each other. Attendance at the ceremony was low, approximately 3,000 people from both sides of the issue. In comparison, the NAACP’s march on Martin Luther King day brought out nearly 50,000 supporters earlier this year.

Across the state, most South Carolinians ignored the media hype and enjoyed the long July 4th weekend. The mood of the day was neither anger nor excitement. It was relief. Finally the media circus and embarrassing headlines will end — at least for the moment.

This is a real problem for the opponents of the Confederate flag. There is nearly universal agreement that the flag would not have come down Saturday without the NAACP tourism boycott begun in January. However, now that the terms of the boycott have been met, many NAACP supporters are still unsatisfied. Some flag opponents are unhappy that the flag’s new home — on a 30-foot flagpole at the busiest intersection in downtown Columbia — is far more visible than the statehouse dome. Their feeling of discomfort was heightened by flag supporters shouting “Off the dome and in your face” during the flag ceremony.

Other NAACP supporters acknowledge that the flag flying at the monument to fallen Confederate soldiers is not a position of sovereignty (a key requirement for ending the boycott), but want to take the debate to the next level.

At a protest rally held by the Assembly of African-American Leaders, state representative Joe Neal told the 300 or so people gathered that “the state has done only part of its work — Removing [the Confederate flag] from the dome addresses the issue of sovereignty, but what has not been dealt with is the offensiveness of this flag to so many people here in this state.”

This shift in the debate, from the appropriateness of the Confederate banner over the statehouse to the inherent symbolism of the flag itself, could be the NAACP’s Waterloo in their fight to de-Confederatize the American South.

Keeping the flag on the dome put southern-heritage advocates in the position of defending the indefensible. As a political flag flying in a political spot, the flag’s legacy as a symbol of Jim Crow could not be ignored. It was unreasonable to ask black South Carolinians denied the right to vote by racists waving that flag to ignore it’s political context as it flew over the capitol along with Old Glory.

Thus, it was easy for the NAACP to garner national and local support for its boycott. Many white South Carolinians, including conservatives like me, were uncomfortable with that symbolism and understood that the Confederate flag should not fly over the bodies making laws for all the state’s citizens.

However, convincing Americans that the flag shouldn’t fly over the capitol is very different from convincing them it should not fly at all. According to a Gallop poll taken in May at the height of the legislative debate, only 28 percent of Americans say that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, while 59 percent of Americans say the flag is more a symbol of Southern pride. And in South Carolina, 49 percent of those surveyed supported flying the flag on statehouse grounds while only 21 percent supported it’s complete removal from public display.

Now that the flag is flying in a clearly historic context, the “pride vs. prejudice” debate will begin on a more level playing field. Instead of defending race-based politics, flag supporters can defend the flag as a symbol of the South’s unique history and dynamic, troubled struggle over race relations.

By converting the debate from one of politics to one of history, the NAACP’s boycott could have the unintended, and extremely ironic, consequence of rescuing the Confederate flag from the clutches of the racist rednecks and delivering it to southern heritage advocates as a symbol of regional pride.

None of this is certain, of course. Political correctness could easily roll over the Confederate flag in the future.

However, the speculation in South Carolina is that the national NAACP will turn its attention to Georgia and Mississippi where the Confederate flag is part of the state flag and where flag opponents will once again have the political high ground. And support for the South Carolina boycott is already slipping. Local NAACP leaders still talk of targeting sports events, but the Southern Conference (which was honoring the boycott) has already decided to hold its soccer playoffs in Charleston. And the NCAA is making positive statements about the change in South Carolina.

Some leaders in South Carolina’s black community are vowing to continue the fight. The state president of the NAACP called the flag deal “a slap in the face.” Kevin Grey of the Harriet Tubman Freedom House Project compared the Confederacy to the Third Reich on Saturday, saying “Our nation should not have to witness a flag being raised at gunpoint to the cheers of the intolerant and racist.”

But most South Carolinians are looking forward to a few months of blissful boredom. The summer primary election season, which just concluded last week, was uneventful. Cries of “Through the bum’s out” proved hollow, and without video poker and the Confederate flag to bring them out, South Carolina’s tractor-pull voters will likely return to the mobile homes from whence they came and stay there in November.

Politically, then, South Carolina has entered another post-Civil War period: If there’s going to be another big, bloody fight, we aren’t going to be the ones who start it.

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