Take On the Talking Heads
A Flurry Remains Unfurled
by Garry Wills
Not everyone in South Carolina is a racist, a bigot, a hater. But the way to get Republican votes there is to pander to those who are. That is why George W. Bush went to Bob Jones University to sound pious before an audience that would not let his brother Jeb go there since he has an interracial marriage.
Bob Jones IV, a descendant of the school's founder, has published vicious words on John McCain, saying that he thinks in Marxist terms and does not care for his wife. Jones published this in a magazine edited by an adviser to George W. Bush. It is humiliating to the entire nation that candidates submit to such local ordeals by bigotry in order to achieve the highest office in this country.
John McCain has also deserted the standard of decency as he submits to the state's discipline. He who was going to defy polls and speak uncomfortable truths now humbly bows before a poll that says the state does not want anyone to express an opinion on the flying of the Confederate flag who is not a South Carolinian.
While McCain crumples nonheroically to this prejudice, others are making clear calls to treat bigots with the avoidance they deserve. Colleges such as Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Temple have refused to take part in sports events inside the state so long as it flaunts the flag. The Southern Conference basketball league has called for the flag's removal and said that it is considering cancellation of future tournaments in Greenville if their call is not answered. USA Track and Field is arranging to have athletes stay in private homes when they engage in Olympic trials in the state, to punish the hotels and restaurants of the state for their acquiescence in the act of bigotry.
Why do Americans resent the flying of the Confederate flag? For the same reason Germans should resent the flying of the swastika. Defenders of the Nazi symbol can say everything South Carolinians do about their emblem -- that many people fought for it with a sense of German tradition and not with an adherence to anti-Semitism; that the record of those fighters' suffering should be honored; that other things than the Holocaust were done and endured under that flag. All true -- and irrelevant. The great sin of the German nation was advanced under that banner, and it is forever tainted by it. The great sin of our nation was slavery, which had a longer history than Nazism of denying dignity, liberty and life to human beings out of racial hate. That history was being defended, among other things, under the Confederate flag -- just as anti-Semitism was being fought for, among other things, under the shadow of the swastika. Those outside South Carolina can recognize that fact and honor the victims of the racists, not the racists themselves, by responding to feelings of the victims' heirs. The Confederate flag is an affront to all blacks, as the swastika is an affront to all Jews.
Copyright © 2000 Universal Press Syndicate
