Confederate flag not lowered to half-mast
CHARLESTON — After Dylann Storm Roof allegedly shot up an AME church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people, two flags were lowered more than 100 kilometres away in Columbia, the state’s capital. Atop the South Carolina State House, the U.S. flag and South Carolina’s palmetto flag flew at half-mast as the manhunt for Roof ended with his capture in North Carolina. The show of respect would have been appropriate even if one of the state legislature’s own — state Sen. Clementa C. Pinckney — had not died in the attack.
But a third flag within view of the State House — the Confederate stars and bars — flew as high and as proud as ever.
Roof was photographed wearing flags himself — of defunct white supremacist regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia — and drove a car featuring a Confederate flag licence plate.
And yet, as a pastor and members of his flock lay dead and the Supreme Court dealt a blow to those who wish to display Confederate flags on licence plates in Texas (the court ruled the state has the right to ban the Confederate flag from licence plates), South Carolina seemed to be flaunting its heritage of slavery as the first state to secede from the Union. It was deplorable enough, critics said, that the flag was there in the first place.
But, it seemed, no one — particularly not South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — could do anything about it. This was a matter of law. One Twitter user was quite succinct in describing what the state should do to honour the victims at Emanuel AME.
“Instructions for appropriate display of Confederate flag after tragedy,” American University economics lecturer Daniel Lin wrote. “1) Lower to half-mast 2) Keep lowering until removed 3) You’re done.”