As many critics call on South Carolina to take down the Confederate flag flying near its statehouse, the White House reiterated President Obama’s stance on the symbol.
Obama believes “the Confederate flag belongs in a museum,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One Friday.
Since the death of nine African-American including a state Senator in a massacre where the alleged suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, appeared to be motivated by race, the Confederate flag has flown high in the grounds near state capitol even as Dylann Storm Roof, have as the U.S. and South Carolina flags been lowered to half-staff.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has defended the Confederate flag in the past, arguing in 2014 that she has not “had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.” She said this week that she didn’t have the legal authority to take it down, but that she expected to have a “conversation” about it with her constituents.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN Friday it’s up to South Carolinians, but that the flag “is part of who we are.”
Meanwhile, the NAACP and others are lobbying that remove the flag from the statehouse grounds, especially given that Roof was photographed in front of a car thought to be his with a Confederate flag license plate.
“The fact is, here in 2015 in South Carolina, we still fly the Confederate flag on our statehouse grounds,” Lonnie Randolph, the president of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP, said Thursday. “How many other states in America do that?”
So do I, but oh brother the whiney, victimized right is going to go ballistic . . . yet again.
No lets leave it up at the State Capital, where it is held in place by a lock and chain and cannot even be lowered on a pully like any other flag. Apparently the symbolism of the Confederate Flag is not enough of a message for the good people of South Carolina, they have to include chains.
Lyndsey Graham was right, it is who they are.
I find it hard to believe that if the governor of the state walked up to the person in charge of putting up flags and said “Take the damn thing down,” they wouldn’t do it. And that’s what she should do. And then she should say “I broke the law and it was the decent thing to do in the circumstances and I’m not going to apologize.” But then she’d have to had some decency.
They’ll threaten to break the law over every other little thing they don’t like, after all.
“Appeared”…??? Roof said that was the exact reason he murdered those people. Why are people in the media so afraid to say it?
As for what Pres. Obama said; he’s right. The flag is a symbol of hate and division. That Haley would not even consider taking it down in light of the recent tragedy shows she lacks decency. Pretty sick.00000
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN Friday it’s up to South Carolinians, but that the flag "is part of who we are."
Who can argue with that!!!