Editorial: No other choice but to lower flag

This is no time for halfway measures. The Confederate battle flag flying on the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse needs to come down.

We hope the lawmakers who are charged with making sure that happens don’t get cold feet.

A growing chorus of South Carolinians – black and white, young and old, men and women, Democrats and Republicans – are calling for the lowering of the flag as a response to the murder of nine people at the Emanuel AME Church of Charleston on June 17. Dylann Roof, the accused shooter, posted pictures on the Internet of himself holding the battle flag in one hand and a pistol in the other as he announced his intention to start a race war in the state.

Before the church massacre, few in the state had actively agitated for removal of the flag from its spot in a Confederate memorial on the grounds of the capitol. Even those who would have preferred to see the flag taken down had to concede that most people seemed content to leave it where it was and that amassing the two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature required by law to move it would have been nearly impossible.

But the shooting changed that. Many residents had regarded the compromise of 2000, which moved the flag from the Statehouse dome to its current site, as final.

But after the rampage in Charleston, more and more South Carolinians – including Gov. Nikki Haley and a number of other prominent politicians – began to see the flag from a new perspective. The massacre opened their eyes as to why so many people view that flag as a painful symbol of hate and oppression.

“My state will never be able to move forward after this shooting if we don't take the flag down,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The people at the A.M.E. church, the families of the victims changed everything by their grace, by their love, by their forgiveness, making it impossible for a guy like me to say, ‘Keep the flag up.’”

Haley, explaining how she had concluded that removing the flag is necessary, told The (Columbia) State, “I can’t allow anything used for hate to be on the Statehouse grounds and represent all the people of South Carolina. I work for all of the people of South Carolina.”

But, as noted, the compromise of 2000 requires a super-majority of legislators to approve the flag’s removal. And despite the growing consensus in favor of taking down the flag, getting two-thirds of the Legislature to vote for that could be difficult.

Some already appear to be hedging their bets. They are talking about alternatives to removing the flag, such as replacing the battle flag with some other Confederate flag.

“I don’t see it as just a leave-it-up or take-it-down scenario,” said state Rep. Gary Simrill, R-Rock Hill this week.

We think he’s dead wrong. That’s exactly the scenario facing state lawmakers if they hope to offer a credible sign that they understand the anguish the Confederate flag causes a significant number of South Carolinians, both black and white.

Taking down the flag is the only fitting response to the appropriation of the banner by those such as Dylann Roof who use it to convey their racial hatred and intolerance. As Graham, Haley and many others have urged, let’s take down the flag and move South Carolina forward.

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Editorial: No other choice but to lower flag."