Roy Barnes on the Confederate flag and where the South needs to go from here

[struggle4progress]

Few are more qualified to talk about the South’s contradictions than Georgia’s 80th governor, who oversaw the revamp of the state flag in 2001
September 25, 2015

... My position is that in the Civil War, there were those who fought valiantly, but they were fighting for the wrong cause. This idea that, “Well, the Civil War was not fought on slavery grounds”? I’ve read those Ordinances of Secession, and I’ve not seen one that said, “We’re leaving the Union because we’re upset over high tariffs from the central government” ... The only way you can explain it is, that the South is a place where the subtle forces of racism have been deemed acceptable. “Heritage” instead of “I just hate blacks” ...

It’s become a euphemism. When the South went through integration and resistance to integration, there was always a Confederate flag being flown. So why should we have a Confederate Memorial Day ... and we don’t even declare a holiday recognizing the founding of Georgia, on February 12, 1733? Don’t you think that was an important day, more than a four-year time period in which we were in rebellion? ...

... I treasure my enemies as much as I treasure my friends. When I was governor, I used to have them bring in a handful of hate mail. The funniest one said, “I hope when he dies they wrap him in the Confederate flag and bury him facedown” ... You can’t change their minds. Faulkner once said, “History is not dead; it’s not even past.” All I can tell you about is politics in Georgia, and I’ve been beaten more times than an old rug. But I do know this: In the South, it is necessary that we have extraordinary leaders because those leaders have to move the public, rather than being moved by the public. Sometimes that causes defeat. My answer to that is, “So what?” Believe me, political defeat is not the end of the world ...

I didn’t get up one morning and say, “Wouldn’t it be nice to change the flag?” I understand politics. I wanted to be reelected. But we had 13 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Georgia, and they came or sent representatives to meet with me in the fall of 2000 to say this flag was becoming a problem. The NCAA had already said they were not going to bring the Final Four here. Pete Correll, then the CEO of Georgia-Pacific, articulated it best: “We have three flagpoles in front of Georgia-Pacific: one for the American flag, one for the Georgia flag, one for Georgia-Pacific. When we have foreign visitors, I take down the Georgia flag. Because they’ll ask questions, particularly if they’re from Europe: ‘Why do you have this flag that we only see being carried by skinheads in Europe?’” ...

http://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/roy-barnes-on-the-confederate-flag-and-where-the-south-needs-to-go-from-here/