Nearly a month ago, a psychotic, white male killed 9 black parishioners as they worshiped at Emmanual African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. It was and is a horrific incident that members of that community will deal with for the rest of their lives.
However, it is also something that raised a couple of interesting ideas, and buried the story that should have been looked at. What I've seen over the past month is not a focus on the murderer, or the 9 church members whose lives were so callously taken. No, rather the focus has been on the Confederate flag. Why? Because it's offensive and a symbol of oppression.
That's fine, and if state /local governments or citizen groups want to get on with dispensing of the Confederate flag in public areas, that is their prerogative, and they should do it if they feel it is right.
However, the notion of oppression is a bit open-ended, as are the symbols that may represent them. The swastika is a symbol that is most often associated with Adolph Hitler and the Nazis during WWII era Germany, but it has been around for thousands of years prior to that in a variety of religious uses in a myriad of different religions throughout the world. By no means am I comparing the Confederate flag with the swastika, but mostly because the Confederate flag (the "battle flag") does not have a history that has anything to do with anything outside of the Confederacy, and the South's attempt to withdraw from the Union.
However, if it's oppressive symbols that hurt people's feelings, or bring about thoughts of former terrible regimes and people who have done harm in the world, what of the Union Jack, the very symbol of our former Colonial ancestors (and current ally) Great Britain? Others might also argue that the U.S. Stars and Stripes could be labeled as a symbol of oppression as well, if looked at from certain group's perspective. Should both of those flags be banned within our border, so as to not offend people and remind them of the oppressive regimes who used them as their symbol of power?
More important to me is that real issues are being ignored, while the Confederate flag story is running through state houses and news outlets, littering the landscape with details that are in fact not at all enlightening, nor helpful. If there are those who think that the Confederacy was right to enslave black Americans, there's not much to be done to help that kind of stupid. If there are those that observe it as a historical remnant of states fighting for their way of life (however morally reprehensible they may be) and their right to withdraw from the Union, that may not be as offensive, or as stupid as the prior group, but it still may be time for those people to join the 21st century, where states are looking to withdraw from the Union for a host of different reasons that may be looked back on by future generations as equally stupid.
The big problem I have with all of this is how the issue has now become political, in the most negative way possible. Democrat members of Congress are using the issue as a way to hold up budget battles with Republicans, instead of doing their jobs and looking out for what is best for the American people, and again, no talk is occurring about the shooter, or the victims' families who are dealing with their grief. Instead, political groups are once again taking a tragedy and couching it in a way to push forth an agenda. This is wrong, and should not be allowed to occur, but with a complacent media and 'leaders' who care only about their own fortune, that is not what happens here, or anywhere there is a tragedy.
Then there are those who would look to affect even greater gun control laws, in order to make society 'safer'. Of course, the problem with that is those who would seek to murder in this way are not ones who are going to follow laws. They'll simply buy their guns illegally, or they'll use other means to create the havoc they are seeking to achieve.
Mira Thompson, Daniel Simmons, Sr., Clementa Pinckney, Depayne Middleton, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, and Tywanza Sanders all deserve better than that.
