Mark McCormick: Remove Confederate flag, but also do more

In two separate news media interviews last week regarding the Confederate flag controversy at Wichita’s Veterans Memorial Park, I insisted on the inclusion of the following quote: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

This quote from Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, eerily similar to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, really settles the “noble heritage” argument advanced by flag defenders.

But neither outlet used the quote, so my other statements landed well out of context, and I awoke Sunday to a letter to the editor indirectly portraying me as accommodating the flag (“Keep flag,” June 28 Opinion).

I raised this Memorial Park issue years ago, and I understand better than most what the flag symbolizes.

Two weeks ago, I stood in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where Stephens’ adherents murdered four little girls changing for Sunday school; where dogs and water cannons cut down peaceful teenage protesters in the park across the street; where Klansman dynamited African-Americans’ homes to maintain segregated neighborhoods.

The quotation the letter writer attached to me – “If they take that flag down, what did we win? It’s a hollow victory because we are focusing on a symptom rather than the actual disease” – was accurate. But I wasn’t arguing against lowering the flag. My point was that African-Americans sometimes seek moral victories as opposed to substantive ones. Complex issues such as structural inequality defy surface solutions.

Take the flag down, and then what? Celebrate?

These discussions reflect classic examples of work avoidance.

Too many white Americans won’t examine the living, breathing vestiges of our country’s racist past; too many African-Americans would rather march than commit to the real work of building community; and, frankly, my media friends could have worked Stephens’ words into those stories.

The flag should come down.

But we need to come up with better paths to progress than hollow symbolism.

And you can quote me on that.

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Mark McCormick: Remove Confederate flag, but also do more."