June, 2015

Confederate Flag in 2015 - WTF

Monday, June 22nd, 2015

Confederate Flag in 2015 - WTF

I was born in 1955 in Galax, Virginia, a little town an hour north of the North Carolina border, named for the Galax Leaf, a deep green, heart-shaped baby’s fist on top of a long stem. If you’re lucky enough to have read this blog from the beginning you know what I’m talking about.

When I was 4 years old my parents and my baby sister and I did a road trip to Florida to visit Lois and Fred Benjamin. I remember seeing COLORED and WHITE bathroom signs, COLORED and WHITE drinking fountains.

That was 56 years ago.

WTF

9 black bible study parishioners were shot in cold blood in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a white shooter who sat amongst them for an hour and later said he almost didn’t kill them because they were so nice to him. The shooter’s ancestors got to drink out of the WHITE drinking fountains, got to sit on the bus in whatever seat they wanted, got to vote without paying a poll tax. But, poor little white shooter stated he was Scared-Scared-Scared the blacks were taking over the USA. Oh, my. He wore little racist flags on his jackets and posed in photos with big guns, such a white stud was he, out there to save the white folks from the big bad black folks.

For the nearly 2 terms President Obama has been in the White House, the smarmy little breathy coward Republicans have laughed off the racial slurs about Obama, or worse still, have ignored them and when asked about the countless threats against him have never been brave enough to call out the racists in their party. So you tell me, you tell me, YOU TELL ME, how exciting it is to be moving the Confederate Flag from the Capitol grounds of South Carolina to where, a Racist Remembrance Museum?

Gov. Haley parsed her words so carefully today that I felt like someone was plucking out my eyelashes, one by one. She means no offense to the Confederate Flag lovers, Oh No, Oh please God No, she just needs to get the damn flag off the Capitol grounds.

So go ahead, you South Carolinians, and fly your Confederate flags at home or in your bathrooms or on your cars and in your trucks, anywhere but over the Capitol grounds now that 9 church going Christians have been murdered in your backyard, one of them a state Senator.

You will feel so much better.

Won’t you?