I’ve not had much time for local news the past few days, but I notice this morning that Steve Spurrier (head football coach at the University of South Carolina – for those of you who don’t follow South Carolina’s dominant religion) has blasted the flying of the Confederate flag on State House ground.
Spurrier feels that
“No one had ever asked me about my opinion on the flag, but if they had I would have told them it needs to come down. I don’t know anybody that disagrees with me, but obviously there are a lot of South Carolinians that do.”
[…]
The flag issue, according to Spurrier, is an obstacle to the state’s improving its image.
Sounds pretty sensible to this Tiger fan. If you want to convince the rest of the country that South Carolina isn’t a state full of ignorant, bigoted rednecks, a good place to start might be that flag and the racism it has come to symbolize.
I actually learned about Spurrier’s remarks from taking a glance as the letters to the editor page of The State. One letter caught my eye. It said:
Coach Steve Spurrier’s claims that removing the Confederate memorial flag would “make us a more progressive, better state.†This is akin to a coach saying that if the team would change its uniform colors or mascot, the team would score more touchdowns.
[…]
Removing a flag that commemorates history to solve the state’s problems makes as much sense as rearranging the deck chairs on Titanic to save the ship.
In a sense, this letter writer has a point. Removing the flag would do little to ease the burdens of folks living in our poorest counties. It would do little to improve infant mortality, or to better fund our schools.
But I’ve learned something from being an educator all these years. For a student to rise to the challenge of learning something new, he must first realize that his ignorance is not something to be proud of. Once he realizes that, he has a motivation to invest the time and effort necessary to learn something new.
For this state to become a “more progressive, better state”, it has to do the same thing. We have to stop being proud of the ignorant things some of our forefathers did. The flag is just a small step, but it’s an important one.
The letter writer got his metaphor wrong. Removing the flag isn’t rearranging the deck chairs. It’s taking the first, small step towards the lifeboats.