Big whoop, I guess. I guess if you cant Barbecue you may as well burn a flag.
- John Sims,
an artist from Sarasota, Florida, is honoring the constitutional right
of self-expression by staging burnings and burials of the Rebel flag,
that troublesome symbol of the Old South that many, particularly
African-Americans, associate with slavery, white supremacy and
state-sponsored terrorism and lynchings.
“We are in America, and people have the right to fly whatever flag
[they want],” Sims said. “And I have the right to bury whatever flag,
and to burn whatever flag.”
Does he have a point to make/ Is he right about the flags history? Is it racist? Well, that doesn't matter to him because, as The Grio reported, they "know better."
- Although defenders of that flag may want to convince us that it has
nothing to do with slavery, or segregation, or hating black people, we
know better. After all, aside from serving as an official flag of the
Confederacy and a symbol used by groups such as the Klan, the
Confederate battle flag played a prominent role against the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s. After the Brown v. Board of Education
school desegregation decision, states such as Georgia reintroduced the
flag in protest, while other states incorporated the secessionist symbol
into the state flag, and others flew the battle flag on top of the
state house. After Georgia changed its flag in 2003, Mississippi remains
the only state flag to incorporate the Confederate emblem.