The South Carolina capital ... without the Confederate flag.
A little over a month ago, I wrote a blog entry (see "Pardon Our Sensitivity") about the Confederate flag after some recent events that happened in North Carolina. In that blog, I talked about growing up in South Carolina and how it had been made clear year and year and over and over again that the state government in South Carolina was never going to remove that flag.
A couple weeks after I wrote that blog, there was the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. And days after the shooting, there were renewed pleas and protests in getting the Confederate flag removed from the state capital. After weeks of heated discussions, several rallies in favor of and in opposition to the flag, and many hours of debate on the state senate and house floors, the flag is down. It's came down TODAY.
I never thought I would live to see this day. Never.
But ... I'm glad the day has finally come.
The debate over the removal of this flag has gone on in South Carolina for as long as I can remember. I never understood the debate because the flag should have NEVER been on the capital grounds in the first place. For some people, the flag means "heritage". For others, it means racial oppression. How in the world could something so divisive be allowed to fly for so long on a state capital when it clearly isn't representative of all the state's people?
While I am happy, grateful, and thankful the flag is not on the state grounds anymore, today's removal is a bittersweet victory. I'm still saddened that it took nine innocent people getting killed in order for lawmakers in South Carolina to realize the flag needed to go .., something many of us have always known.
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