Maybe It Really Is Time For the South To Rise Again-- But Without The Built-In Racism This Time

On Friday the House voted, 232-180 to admit Washington, DC-- which has more people than Wyoming and Vermont-- as a state. Every Republican-- ironically, the party of unadulterated and unashamed racism-- voted no, as did the most Republican of the House Dems, Minnesota Blue Dog Collin Peterson. There were 8 other Democrats who wanted top vote NO-- and in fact did vote with the GOP on their motion to recommit, but who felt their best strategy was to have it both ways, voting with the GOP on the motion and with the Democrats on the bill:

• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Jared Golden (careerist-ME)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Conor Lamb (careerist-PA)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)

McConnell already declared it DOA as far as the Senate is concerned, somehow deciding statehood for Washington is-- wait for it-- "socialist." So his virulent and disgusting racism had nothing to do with it at all. And if McConnell were to be hit by a car tonight and whisked off to his place in Satan's bed, Trump has already said he would veto it, although didn't mention he's the most racist president to ever occupy the White House. The District, by the way, is 49% African-American so, the thinking goes among racists like McConnell and Trump and, generally all the Republicans in Congress... why give them a House seat and two Senate seats?

So I asked myself why is there still so much racism in our country. Why is it still a thing? Inequality politically and economically are bad enough but what about in our hearts? Why?

Stuart Stevens, a Mississippi Republican had something to say about that yesterday at The Bulwark-- at least for part of the problem: My Confederate Past. Before we get to Stevens' reflections, a little news (beyond Faith Hill's call for Mississippi to get a new Confederate-free state flag): there's plan to do just that and that started today, a flag that was adopted in 1894 at the height of the white backlash to Reconstruction.

As of Friday at noon, the plan-- which several sources reiterated was “extremely fluid”-- is for the House of Representatives to begin the legislative process to remove or replace the flag on Saturday morning.

A resolution will be filed that would suspend the rules so that legislators could take up a bill to address the flag. This resolution is expected to be the most difficult part of the process because it requires approval of a two-thirds majority in each chamber (82 of 122 House members, 35 of 52 Senate members). And the resolution must be passed by both chambers before either chamber could actually begin the process of debating the actual bill. [It did pass the House today-- 85 to 35-- and Gov. Reeves announced he will sign the final bill into law if it passes the state Senate too.] UPDATE: Last in the day, the Senate passed it too!

If the two-thirds threshold to suspend the rules is met, a simple majority would be required to pass the actual bill (62 of 122 House members, 27 of 52 Senate members).

Sources close to House leadership say they have-- for now-- the two-thirds majority votes to suspend rules, but they stress the margin is very thin.

On the Senate side, reports are that the leadership is “close”-- within one or two votes-- to having a two-thirds vote to suspend rules. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the plan is for the House to move first.

...Many Republican lawmakers have for years opposed changing the flag, particularly without a popular vote on the issue. Some who want the Legislature to change it fear a backlash from constituents.

And  Republican Gov. Tate Reeves-- the de facto head of the state GOP-- opposes the Legislature changing the flag.

But that sentiment appears to be changing among some lawmakers.

Rep. Karl Oliver, R-Winona, in a 2017 social media post said that those who support the removal of Confederate monuments should be “lynched.” In recent weeks, he declined to comment on the flag issue.

But on Thursday, Oliver issued a statement that said: “I am choosing to attempt to unite our state and ask each of you to join me in supporting a flag that creates unity-- now is the time.” Oliver’s statement said the flag issue is growing “more divisive by the day” and “History will record the position I chose.”

A growing list of businesses, cities, counties and other groups have either stopped flying the flag or asked leaders to change it. Religious leaders have spoken out, saying changing the flag is a “moral issue.”  The NCAA, SEC, and Conference USA this month took action to ban post-season play in the state until the flag is changed.

"It’s difficult to explain to a non-Southerner," wrote Stevens, "the role the Confederate flag has played in our lives. I suspect that’s more so for a Mississippian than for someone from any other state as Mississippi is the most Southern of the states. Put it this way: If you have connections to the University of Mississippi-- the most Southern school in the most Southern state-- then your connection to the Confederate flag is what the shamrock is to Notre Dame. I was born in the 1950s to parents who met at Ole Miss. The role Ole Miss football played in my life was basically what the Catholic Church is to the Jesuits. It was both a belief system and the organizing principle of life. Saturdays in the fall were the Holy Days when the Faithful would gather and reinforce our devotion through the shared communion of ritual."

These were not football games but celebrations of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Only this time our 11 soldiers on the field of battle more often than not emerged victorious. At halftime the band marched in Confederate battle gray uniforms while Colonel Reb led the cheerleaders in unfolding what was billed as the world’s largest Confederate flag. (Even as a 10-year-old I remember wondering, “How big was the second-largest flag?”) Cheerleaders threw bundles of Confederate flags into the stands. We stood and swayed together singing Dixie, always ending in the stadium-shaking cry, “The South Shall Rise Again.”

It was at halftime in the 1962 Ole Miss-Kentucky game at Jackson’s Memorial Stadium-- walking distance from my home-- that Governor Ross Barnett gave his famous speech calling for states’ rights. We beat Kentucky that afternoon and the next day in Oxford there began the last pitched battle of the Civil War. It took 30,000 troops to force the University of Mississippi to accept a single black student.

Today you’re more likely to get a student riot if a top-ranked black athlete committed to Ole Miss and then switched at the last minute to Alabama.

...Mississippi has the highest percentage of African Americans of any state in the country. I ask myself now why did it take so long for me to realize what it might be like for nearly 40 percent of my state to go to school and work under a flag that represented a cause dedicated to the right to own their ancestors? Why is it that I had written books about traveling through China, Africa, and Europe, fascinated by every cultural quirk I came across, before I looked up at my own state flag and thought about the dehumanizing brutality it represented?

I don’t have any good answers, most likely because there are none. I was given every opportunity in this life, an open door to the world, a chance at the best education in the United States and England, a family that supported my odd passions that I was lucky enough to turn into professions. I had passport stamps from 61 countries with different flags before I began to think about my own state’s flag. It wasn’t that I was actively for the flag . . . but that indifference was just as toxic as active support.

Today many white Mississippians of my generation-- and even more of the younger generation-- are eager to change. Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” We can’t undo what we didn’t do.

But my regret is mixed with a hope. Hope that perhaps we can take steps-- small and inadequate as they might be-- to face the truth of our Confederate past. And in doing so change the future.

It will never be enough. But I hope today we can take one more step out of the shadows of a bloody past into the brighter sun of a better day.

This morning, the NY Times released a poll by Siena that showed how out of touch Trump-- who reflexively and unceasingly stokes The Lost Cause and American divisiveness over race-- is on sentiments about race seem to be heading. 59% of voters, including 52% of white voters, believe the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis was "part of a broader pattern of excessive police violence toward African Americans. Black Lives Matter is seen as favorably as the police as an institution is (44% for BLM, 43% for the police). "The numbers add to the mounting evidence that recent protests have significantly shifted public opinion on race, creating potential political allies for a movement that was, within the past decade, dismissed as fringe and divisive. It also highlights how President Trump is increasingly out of touch with a country he is seeking to lead for a second term: While he has shown little sympathy for the protesters and their fight for racial justice, and has continued to use racist language that many have denounced, voters feel favorably toward the protests and their cause."