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.
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Spurrious: ““make us a more progressive, better stateâ€
…by removing the Confederate flag?
This is nothing but politically correct BS.
Spurrious is a sellout.
What did they use to call them?-
Scalawags?
Admit it, Tom. You didn’t really read the post above. You just wanted to post “Spurrious” on the Internet. 🙂
all comments about the coach that’s going to own clempson for the rest of this decade and beyond aside … i believe we here in s.c. suffer from an aggressive apathy.
it’s almost like so many of us are proud that we don’t care about the world around us. the flag just symbolizes that. unfortunate for the southern heritage people. the KKK ruined that flag for them forever.
Oh the wingnuts have been going ballistic in the Charleston paper over this. The dedicated a few days worth of letters to the editor to this. Same tired arguments as well.
I guess the “Old Ball Coach” isn’t the savior they were hoping for up in Columbia. Darth Visor has struck again and this time it’s not at one of the other SEC football schools, it’s at every Borat RV riding’s pride and joy.
Eric, don’t get your hopes up too much for a decade of Gamecock dominance. Y’all said the same sort of thing when USC hired Lou Holtz – and that didn’t turn out so well, either.
Speaking of Lou Holtz … and keeping to the topic of the flag, both Lou Holtz and Tommy Bowden also spoke out in favor of taking the flag down. It’s got to be bad for recruiting for both schools to have South Carolina known as “that backwards, redneck state that doesn’t realize that the Civil War was over quite some time ago”.
.
And … days of letters over this? I suppose I’m glad that I haven’t had time to check out the opnion pages for the past couple of days.
ahhh … but there’s only three years left in this decade. i think we’ll take those is what i’m saying.
beyond that, it all depends on how long he stays … which likely won’t be another decade. and maybe less if there’s enough redneck gamecock fans out there to drive him away.
Oh the letters are still coming in.