It is a sin before God that every federal and state flag in South Carolina has been lowered to honor the nine victims of a white-power terrorist in Charleston this week — but the Confederate flag continues to fly full-staff at the entrance to the Statehouse in Columbia.
So much about the way the Palmetto State has come together in the aftermath of this tragic event has made me proud to be a lifelong resident and lover of my state. That pride is tarnished by the shame and revulsion I feel knowing that my state continues to sanction the use of a symbol that is so often used to justify hate and division. That's how the thug who pulled the trigger at a prayer meeting Wednesday night clearly sees it. I cannot fathom how the "heritage not hate" proponents can stomach arguing the point in these sad days before those murdered have even been laid to rest. While I respect those who embrace their ties to the history and sacrifice of Confederate forebears, even they must admit that Dylann Roof and far too many bigots and racial provocateurs consider the flag more an icon of heritage AND hate.
My beloved hometown of Charleston is still in shock after these horrid events - and so am I. Despite the grief, we must have this debate about the flag one more time - and my hope is that it can be settled once and for all with its removal from the grounds at the Capitol once and forever.
In the news business, we run the risk of becoming somewhat hardened to tragedy and human suffering, largely as a mental coping mechanism. It's not that I don't abhor each and every story about mass shootings and all manner of mayhem, but they happen far too regularly for any of us to mourn them too deeply. If we did, madness would surely follow.
Wednesday was different for me in so many ways. To be truthful, I lost it ... and to be clear, this is very personal for me and my opinions on the flag are my own, and not, at least at this point, those of the Aiken Standard editorial board.
As I watched the details pour in overnight and into Thursday morning, I was both enraged and reduced to tears more than once.
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, known affectionately as "Mother Emanuel" for its role in the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal sect, is in the heart of downtown Charleston - both literally and figuratively. My mother grew up around the corner from the Calhoun Street sanctuary, and I have walked by its iconic spire on many an occasion.
As we all now know, Roof, 21, was arrested Thursday and is accused of killing nine people, including the pastor, at a prayer meeting inside the historic black church. He didn't just walk in and start shooting. In a somehow even more evil twist, Roof reportedly sat with members of the church during a bible study for an hour before announcing he was there to "shoot black people."
The church's pastor, S.C. Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed. Pinckney, 41, was a married father of two who was elected to the state House at the age of 23, making him the youngest member of the House at the time. Pinckney was the best of what South Carolina has to offer in every sense - Roof is, without question, the worst.
There were signs Dylann Roof espoused a white-power agenda before this tragedy — he displayed a Confederate flag on his car's front license plate, and in a photo on his Facebook page, he wears a jacket with stitched-on flag patches from two other defeated white-ruled regimes: Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, and apartheid-era South Africa. Sadly, the difference there makes these faraway African nations look so much better than South Carolina - after they went through racial reconciliations, those nations retired the flags that once represented their segregated past.
The last time the flag issue was seriously debated was more than 15 years ago on the heels of several arson attacks on black churches around the state. That's when the legislature compromised and removed the banner from atop the Statehouse dome and placed it in the current location above a Civil War monument - in front of the General Assembly's front door. The show of respect from at least lowering the flag this week would have been appropriate, especially considering that one of the legislature's own - S.C. Sen. Clementa Pinckney died in the attack. So, once again we are faced with racial terrorism bringing the nagging issue back to the fore. In a twist of irony, on the same day that Pastor Pinckney and members of his flock were slain, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to those who wish to display Confederate flags on license plates in Texas.
South Carolina, this state that I love in all its imperfections, has a heritage that includes being the first state to secede from the Union, largely due to issues surrounding the contested right to own and subjugate other human beings. Just blocks from the scene of Wednesday's massacre is the port where the vast majority of captive and enslaved African-Americans first arrived on the shores of America. We can never change that history, but one would hope we can learn from it and make a statement that we intend to distance ourselves from the reprehensible ear at every turn.
South Carolina has been fighting about the flag for decades. It first went up on the Capitol dome in 1962 in defiance of the civil rights movement, a cultural war raging a century after the first battle of the Civil War - at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor and also very near Emanuel AME Church. The flag came down from the dome in July of 2000, and the legislation that made that happen makes it nearly impossible to alter its location - or even lower it to half staff. The law reads "provisions of this section may only be amended or repealed upon passage of an act which has received a two-thirds vote on the third reading of the bill in each branch of the General Assembly."
The clearest solution I can offer with such overwhelming, and likely, legislative consensus required to alter anything about the flag is to put it in hands of the people. The General Assembly should welcome the chance to get this political hot potato out of their hands by passing a law that requires a binding referendum that would allow the voters of our state to decide the issue.
Let's not wait for another terrorist act to have the debate, and let's never look down in shame as the stars and bars fly high while we mourn the victims of a hate crime.
Tim O'Briant is the Aiken Standard editor and director of audience. He can be reached at tobriant@aikenstandard.com or 803-644-2380.