I sure do hate that damn flag. It's been used by bullies of various flavors to intimidate and control other whites as well as black for decades. Hold that objection you might have! Resentment over that first part is WHY the flag is coming down now.
It was a certain way to start an argument to even remark "Maybe, the NAACP has a point" or even to question not just the right but the mandate to display and praise what I privately called The Yee-Haw, because of the Stars And Bars' close association in my mind with the old CBS show, "The Dukes of Hazzard".
I had a friend, a big fellow and he had a temper. And he would get up in my face, daring me to say more about his heritage. Being a bit bigger, I had the luxury to keep talking but it was obvious that past a certain point, he would take a swing at me and unlike in the movies, fights are very random things and I suppose, like most folks, I wasn't going to put my health and safety on the line over a contest of wills.
So, like most of my fellow South Carolinians in such situations, which probably happened hundreds of times a day, I flinched. I backed off, and kept my concerns to myself and incrementally contributed to that damn flag staying, first atop the State House and later on the State House grounds.
I moved away from South Carolina, for no small reason that there simply are better jobs elsewhere yet also because I got tired of the fights. Not the fisticuffs, that never happened, but the undercurrent of violence in every public discussion. Even if no one in the given circle was a violent person, the anxiety of being overheard was present. The rhetoric itself was often violent.
For we had all been infected by the diligently sustained anger of our angrier peers. And it was anger first...and fear of becoming the immediate target of the anger of others if we varied from the norm too far, in such a way that made us too vulnerable.
For decades, our national discourse has mirrored the jacked-up, juiced-up 24-7 rage that I'm describing about my home state and, less precisely the South in general. Not sure if that's so? Turn on any major media outlet. Still unconvinced? Turn on Rush Limbaugh or better yet Fox News. Need higher octane? Oh, look: Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and bless their hearts the brain trust at Stormfront.
These angry voices from afar whisper in every ear, at every gas station, in every hotel lobby, in more homes than you can shake a stick at, and they do so all the live-long day.
It's not shocking that nine people died in a church last Wednesday because someone took the whispers a bit too seriously.
It's stunning it's only nine people. (Pause) Oh, wait...except it's really closer to 30 million, just confining ourselves to the race of the victims, because racism kills, a second at a time, a day at a time, a year at a time. I'll offer this one factoid: In South Carolina, at-birth life expectancy for African American males is nearly eight years less than for non-Hispanic white males.
At roughly 605,000 in number, that's over 4.8 million people-years. (African American women in South Carolina live roughly 4.5 years less than white females, number 685,000, for another 3.1 million people-lives lost.
That's not natural differences; that's racism. Conclusion: Racism kills, it kills to very high frequency and its probability of being an explanatory factor in differential mortality experience approaches 100%.
So we're not just talking about violent talk. We're not just talking about ingrained attitudes. We're definitely NOT talking just about attachment to culture swag like that damn flag. We're talking about something that kills people to privilege others, a regime that polices and abuses its putative beneficiaries to JOIN the policing and abusing in a diligently and enthusiastic way...or at least shut up and take their cut in the form of privileges.
Some enjoy being the local version of the hammer and sickle, pummeling and culling as the role suits them. Only a few are overt enforcers; many are the gatekeepers at places of business, of education, of opportunity of all kinds. Most are the watchful, furtive judgmental glances between colleagues that You Know Who MIGHT Have Voted For OH-BAAA-MA. (And it's said just like that.)
It's effing hateful. I cringe at the memory of being at the receiving end of moments like that. And it was never, EVER going to end. The bullies had won so completely here; Obama being elected excused kicking out all the stops and letting the hate wagon roll, roll, roll down the hateful hill ...
...all the way to to the AME Church in Charleston. At that point, the undercurrent of strife in our conversations became deadly. And, shocking to the types of persons who might be receptive to Dylann Roof's interesting views on race and what to do about it, the church - the white ones that hold immense power in South Carolina politics - reacted to the AME Church massacre as an attack on their own.
Then other institutions and circles reacted the same way; that an attack with a clear, racist motive was an attack on their own. The people of the city of Charleston - all of them. The board of directors of the Citadel, well 9 out of 12, to be precise. Because one of the victims was a state senator, the South Carolina LEGISLATURE saw this as an attack on one of their own (except for, oh, the 10 who voted against even debated taking down the Confederate Flag), but over 100 went the other way).
I think that what people are reacting to, even people who had significant personal and professional stake in things NEVER changing is a long overdue correction in the emotional environment of the state of South Carolina: An end to decades of oppressively maintained anger and distrust...because one of the self-appointed enforcers of that order up and killed a prayer circle in just the wrong church, at just the wrong time...
...and nearly everyone who mattered in South Carolina politics, most of them conservative because that's who runs the state these days, took the massacre as an attack on their own.
That is why that damn flag is coming down: The good wholesome folk who are just a bit allergic to changes, who not coincidentally vote and donate in droves, have made this issue unavoidable for the state's conservative leaders who are actually two steps behind the remarkable curve. Their reasons, first for dithering and then for the rush to hop on the bandwagon are...nuanced, surely...except for the self-preservation thing.
But let that sink in: Self-preservation, even preservation of social comfort (hand raised abashedly) can be a powerful silencer. It was for decades.
Then a jackass with Stars And Bars swag (amongst other hateful flags) up and killed nine good people. Nine of our better angels, to riff on the Federalist.
We lost nine that night but we didn't lose all our better angels.
And I find myself having something again I thought I'd lost in the near absolute zero of suspended expectations: Faith.
Faith that we can be our better selves. Faith that we can change.
Because damn it to hell, if South Fracking Carolina can make a shift like this, anything is possible.
And that ain't just whistling Dixie.