Tuesday, October 27, 2015

AP: "Ole Miss removes Mississippi flag with Confederate emblem" [and what's with the editors at the Palm Beach Post?]

[UPDATE: The full response by Florida State Senator Arthenia Joyner to the Palm Beach Post editorial board on the Confederate battle flag issue is in the paragraph below the excerpt from the AP. Note that Senator Joyner is also the Democrat leader in the Florida Senate. Suffice to say she is very unhappy with the Post editorial board.]

Emily Wagster Pettus at the Associated Press has this article subtitled, "It [Confederate battle flag] was undermining diversity efforts, said student and faculty." Here is a short excerpt:
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — The University of Mississippi quietly pulled down the state flag on Monday, deciding that the 121-year-old banner's Confederate battle emblem sends a harmful message in this age of diversity.
     Acting under the order of Interim Chancellor Morris Stocks, three campus police officers furled the flag before most students were awake, taking it down from a circle of honor between the white-columned administration building and a marble statue of a saluting Confederate soldier.
Inexplicably, in another recent development The Palm Beach Post editorial board supports keeping the Confederate battle flag on the Florida Senate Seal. Florida Senator Arthenia Joyner, who is also the Democrat leader in the Senate, disagreed strongly with them and let them know it in the strongest possible terms:
     Contrary to your assertions, my intention in stripping the rebel flag from that seal was not to erase a portion of Florida's slave history. Like the memories of my father shielding us from the Klu Klux Klan sweeping through our neighborhood when I was a child, that history can never be erased, nor should it be. [emphasis added]
     But as my colleague, state Sen. Darren Soto, so eloquently stated: "We can't revise history and choose which moments to forget. But we can choose what we highlight in our seal, and what is just and right."
If you want to learn more about the Confederate flag (the "stars and bars) and the "Southern Cross" use this link.