Confederate flag objections built on middle ground, not extremes
Cindi Ross Scoppe
JULY 8, 2015
BACK IN 1994, the public was warming up to the new idea of relocating the Confederate flag from the State House dome to a monument on the grounds when the state Republican Party put a question on its primary ballot that deliberately left out that middle-ground option, forcing voters to choose between up or down, in-your-face or out-of-sight. So even as public support continued to increase for the sensible center, Republicans who were swept into power that year felt bound by the faux referendum, and the debate was stymied for six years ... Normally, I wouldn’t care about this, because we’re dealing with a purely South Carolina matter. It doesn’t matter to me what people in Wisconsin or California or anywhere else think about the flag, and it shouldn’t matter to any of you either, no matter which side you’re on. But this poll so clearly demonstrates a central misperception about this debate that it’s worth talking about. The headlines said the country was evenly divided on support for the Confederate flag, which seems pretty stunning. In fact, though, the poll didn’t actually find that, because the poll didn’t ask a question that would tell us what the country supports. Like the GOP primary question 21 years ago, the poll artificially divided the issue into two extremes. It asked respondents to decide whether the flag “is a racist symbol and should be removed from state flags and other official locations” or “is representative of Southern history and heritage and is not racist.” Those are the extreme positions, and they are not the only positions. As more and more South Carolinians understand, there’s a middle-ground option, one that has grown exponentially in popularity — at least in our state — in these past four weeks. It is this: To me, the flag is about heritage, but I recognize that it is deeply hurtful to others, and so I don’t think it should be flown on government property ...
http://www.thestate.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/cindi-ross-scoppe/article26772565.html
