NCAA Wrong to Target Athletes

Columbia (SC) Free Times ^ | 31 January 2007 | Ron Aiken

[Rebeleye]

...the Confederate battle flag that flies on the State House grounds should be removed immediately, end of story. It has as much right flying in front of our state capitol as a Nazi flag does flying in front of the modern Reichstag.

[Rebeleye]

Let me get this out of the way quickly: the Confederate battle flag that flies on the State House grounds should be removed immediately, end of story. It has as much right flying in front of our state capitol as a Nazi flag does flying in front of the modern Reichstag. Now before you grow indignant about such a provocative comparison, realize that slavery was a Holocaust of its own that lasted more than a century-and-a-half and occured on the very soil we claim as our own.

I’m a Southerner, we’re proud people and I well understand our loving affinity with the past. In fact, my family, I was told by a Charleston tour guide, was the largest slave-owning family at the time of the Civil War. So don’t think you can out-heritage me on this issue, with my progenitors having lost more than anyone else as a direct result of the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s why I can say that as a state, as a people and as a region we were dead wrong then and we’re dead wrong now to perpetuate what is unarguably the cruelest, most shameful aspect of our state’s otherwise rich historical legacy.

In the 337 years since South Carolina was first settled, white people have chosen to fixate on the four worst years possible despite so many other accomplishments — winning the Revolutionary War in the South and likely saving freedom for America being no small member of that list — that merit respect and worthy honor.

If you want to revere history, visit the monument that’s there and read about it. No one has a problem with that — it’s OK, even for Germans, to respect their country’s WWII dead who fought under the orders of racist madmen. But there simply is no reason whatsoever to hoist a flag, Nazi, Confederate or otherwise, when for millions of people it represents slavery, torture, disenfranchisement and inhumanity. And what’s worse, the only reason it was placed atop the dome by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond was to demonstrate our state’s refusal to integrate. Real classy move there, especially from a man who couldn’t keep his zipper shut around black women. Thus, that remains the only reason it’s flying now. To phrase this in terms even an elected official could understand, it’s a flapping disgrace to our state and its citizens, and it’s perched on our state’s front porch for the world to see and judge us by. Call it heritage if you must, but I went to high school, and the people who drove around displaying the flag were not the best students in history class (nor any other class, for that matter). And when I went to college, the only place I saw the flag was adorning frat houses, which completely explains why our legislature — from pages to Senators, frat boys all — have remained fixated upon this symbol they believe represents their views. That the rational world has condemned the symbol as one of hate only strengthens their resolve. It’s what stupid people do when backed into an intellectual corner — they lash out at their accusers and hold on even more tightly (witness Sen. pro tem Glenn McConnell’s recent response to ESPN that there was zero chance of the issue being taken up and House Speaker Bobby Harrell — both of whom are as entrenched in the good-old-boy system as you can get — recently claiming the issue was permanently “settled”). The flag is an embarrassment, and our elected officials are embarrassments to any progress — educational, economic development or otherwise — our state hopes to make solely because of their own moral cowardice.

Now, with that out of the way I want to publicly chide the NAACP for its continued, misguided lobbying of the NCAA to ban all postseason play in South Carolina. Shame on you. The only people injured through both the ban you got enforced and the extended ban you proposed are those almost exclusively in your corner of the fight — young black athletes, local business owners and the universities which, like no other entity in our state, endeavor constantly to change backward, regressive mindsets that fuel racial hatred and misunderstanding.

I am all for protesting the flag’s placement and its existence at all. But no university or college in South Carolina has the authority to move it, only the legislature. If you can’t properly protest and lobby the legislature effectively, then that’s your own fault. Bullying a weak, poisoned-by-political-correctness NCAA into punishing the state by denying millions to the local economy is a failure of imagination, a waste of resources and a slap in the face to your core supporters, most of whom are college graduates of some kind.

I drive past the Capitol every day and see no protesters around the flag or on the steps speaking out against it. The NAACP has time to lobby the NCAA from afar, but not, apparently, to exert constant pressure on the only institution on earth with the power to do something about it.

Boycott the businesses and law firms that key members of the legislature work for. If you want to pressure someone, make them uncomfortable and keep them that way. Every sane, logical argument already is in your corner, and yet you have not been able to generate mainstream support from those without a strong opinion about the flag.

I wonder if any members of those organizations who recommended the NCAA prohibit merit-based postseason games have the nerve to go to USC baseball coach Ray Tanner and Clemson baseball coach Jack Leggett — the two coaches whose nationally ranked programs would have been most adversely affected — and address their teams as to why a baseball team should pay for the legislature’s spiritual bankruptcy?

Go to Harrell and McConnell, not to the NCAA. Go to the op-ed page. Go to the State House grounds every day and make sure people don’t forget about the issue. Go, when the country turns its eyes on us in April and May for the presidential debates, to the media that will be here to make sure every candidate is asked about the flag.

Just leave, for God’s sake, the athletes, coaches and fans who support your goal out of the crossfire. They don’t deserve it, and neither does the issue you purport to serve.

[Alberta's Child]

In the 337 years since South Carolina was first settled, white people have chosen to fixate on the four worst years possible despite so many other accomplishments — winning the Revolutionary War in the South and likely saving freedom for America being no small member of that list — that merit respect and worthy honor.

Just white people, eh?

[Always Right]

Miles Brand is an idiot and should be fired.

[Constantine XIII]

Mr. Rebeleye, that was a beautiful rant. I salute you!

[HEY4QDEMS]

the Confederate battle flag that flies on the State House grounds should be removed immediately, end of story. It has as much right flying in front of our state capitol as a Nazi flag does flying in front of the modern Reichstag.

If these lefties weren't so loathing of the American flag, I might actually give a crap about their argument.

[L98Fiero]

"Remove Flag, But Not at Expense of Black Athletes"

You know, the special ones, the ones who matter.

[Tenacious 1]

I am sorry, but the whole deal with the Confederate Battle Flag is a propaganda victory by some radicals and the media. They won it fair and square a long time ago.

The flag never represented anything racists and the civil war was not fought over slavery. Slavery was only a minor component in a much bigger issue. The flag represents the fighting spirit of men that fought and died for a belief as strong as the one that gave birth to this country. History says it was a misguided belief and I am thankful for the way the war turned out.

However, the South fought against the odds. They fought against a larger army. They had less technology, less money, less supplies. As history measures the two opposing forces ability to make war, the South should have been crushed. It was the fighting spirit of those brave men that almost won the war for them.

It is these men and that spirit that the Confederate Battle Flag should honor and represent. It was only a hundred years afterwards and the onset of PC-ness that changed what the flag stood for.

My highchool took on the Rebels as our name and mascot in honor of that fighting spirit. In 1990, the confederate flag was disallowed at the highschool, but the confederate outfitted mascot was allowed to remain and does to this day. Should we demonize everything that history has regarding the civil war as "racists?"

We fight to "educate" citizens of this nation when it is PC and supports a liberal agenda. Then we vilify and dumb down anything that does not fit the "vision" of the liberal PC crowd.

It's sad, really.

[lovecraft]

Some people choose to look at the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of racism. Myself and others choose to look at the flag as a symbol of our heritage and defiance to the federal government. They believe they are right, so do we. I firmly believe there will be another revolution in this country, possibly in our lifetimes.

It will come due to the myriad of laws that have been and continue to pass that slowly and incrementally strip away our rights to practice religion in public, exercise basic freedoms, and seeks to rehabilitate us whenever we speak something that is deemed Politically InCorrect.

When that time comes, I have a feeling which flag will be used.

[Publius6961]

But there simply is no reason whatsoever to hoist a flag, Nazi, Confederate or otherwise, when for millions of people it represents slavery, torture, disenfranchisement and inhumanity.

Very simply, there is.
For millions more, it represents no such thing. There was more to the southern culture and heritage than slavery, and who are you to define what others feel? The measure of the character and worth of individuals and groups is how they act, not how they feel.

But perhaps the culture of hate that drives this article can best be categorized by pointing out the obvious:
A few million individuals who have no sense of self worth, of community, of culture and of country, feel exactly the same way about the Stars and Stripes.

I refuse to live my life for the sole purpose of satisfying the marginal, whose only sense of power and worth is playing the eternal victim.

[lormand]

N C A A

4 reasons why sports should be banned from academic institutions.

[L98Fiero]

A good post and a good tagline.