LETTER: Confederate flag

Esteemed editors,

Editorial about the confederate flag overlooked one essential point and fudged another. The overlooked point is whose speech the flag on a public space is. Clearly, it is the State’s because it may and does control what it permits on those spaces. That point was clearly answered in this June’s SCOTUS ruling on confederate flag license plates in (of course) Texas. As Justice Breyer wrote, “When the government speaks, it is not barred by the Free Speech Clause from determining the content of what it says.” I would, then, be interested in your argument protecting the state’s right to offend a sizable segment of its population and what the exercise of that “right” that entails about their citizenship and equal status.

Your fudging concerns the idea of putting the unpalatable to a vote. Sorry, but we have a Constitution, as amended, that limits what can be done to citizens by way of a vote or government activity. Equal protection is one of those core principles, and I’d be interested in knowing what message you think a state sends its African American citizens about the protection of its rights when it flies the battle flag of a breakaway confederacy dedicated to the preservation of slavery.

Cheers,

Kevin McNamara
Professor of Literature