"That's South Carolina. It would not be unusual if my car broke down and a guy with a Confederate flag plate helped me out. But you never know. Dylann Roof went to Charleston to kill black people, but he had black friends. That's South Carolina, too."
In a state riven by the recent police shooting of an unarmed black man and now the hate-fuelled slaughter of nine African Americans in a Charleston church, thousands are protesting against the Confederate flag that flies on the grounds of the state capitol - 9m up, surrounded by a black gate.
But the scarred landscape of South Carolina's race relations is marked, too, by thousands of other flags, tattooed on arms, displayed in taverns, printed on bumper stickers, flown in front of homes, and more recently used as Facebook profile pictures by some who believe their views are unfairly under attack.
In the days since the church shooting, the state that was the last to officially acknowledge Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday (in 2000) has realised that the symbolism of the flag remains painfully unresolved.
Top South Carolina politicians, including Republicans Senator Lindsey Graham and Governor Nikki Haley, yesterday called for the flag's removal. The #TakeItDown hashtag has spread across Instagram and Facebook, and people throughout the state are trying to make sense of a symbol that is both a war relic and a banner for white supremacists, both a celebrated symbol of a discrete region and the emblem that Roof kept on the front of his car and brandished in photos he published on his website.
In recent years, South Carolinians say, the Confederate flag has receded from the mainstream. Maurice's Piggie Park, a well-known chain of barbecue restaurants started by a white segregationist, took its last flag down in 2013. The flag has all but disappeared from wealthy or urban neighbourhoods. In several hours of driving through central Columbia, a reporter could find only one home flying the flag, a mobile home that appeared abandoned. "Neighbourhoods have become somewhat more integrated, and a flag will hurt the property values of the neighbourhood," said Rodgers Boykin, 55, an African American artist from Columbia.
But one is still liable to see the flag anywhere: in a Home Depot parking lot, on a billboard along the highway, plastered on T-shirts sold at the Dixie Republic store bearing the words "I Will Never Apologise for Being Southern." And as the flag has become a target of jokes and scorn those who value the flag have dug in for a fight.
"Once again we are under attack," was how Leland Summers, a state leader of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, began a Facebook post at the weekend. Summers wrote that the shootings "have absolutely NO connection, relevance or relationship to the Confederate Battle Flag". The post was ping-ponged around the internet.
Lee Bright, a South Carolina state senator with a Confederate flag framed above his office sofa, said the rebel symbol was threatened by a "war of political correctness" run amok. "If they have such contempt for it, they're welcome to stay where they are. Just because a mass murderer has a symbol on his automobile ... We won't take things out of context just because of an atrocity."
Those who stand behind the Confederate flag say its removal will not change the underlying problem of race relations in America. "Maybe that's true," said Nicole Drown, 24, a white recent graduate of Winthrop University, in Rock Hill, South Carolina. "But it would at least acknowledge the past mistakes of our history." They also say the flag represents a war for states' rights, a campaign against federalism. "Yeah, the war was about states' rights - the right to have slaves," said Deb Libaire of Beaufort, South Carolina, who is white and signed a MoveOn.Org petition calling for the Confederate flag to be taken down.
They also say, almost without exception, that the flag is not about racism.
"Lots of people are trying to put hate into it, but to me it's a part of my heritage," said Ron Campbell, 64, who has a Confederate flag planted in his front yard, right in front of a sign that says his home is "protected by loaded guns".
"The only thing that really gets me - black heritage is being pushed hard," Campbell said. "On the TV news, always one black guy and one white guy. They have Black History Month. Hell, they've got it better than I do, a lot of the blacks. Most are smarter than me. I'm just a common guy." He walked over to his flag and studied the ground. He had bought the flag for US$9.90 at a store in Columbia. He worried that fewer young people agreed with him about what the flag represented. "The next generation, they want a one-race society," he said, referring to the prospect of a population in which racial distinctions are lost. "I'm the last of a dying breed."
The Confederate Flag
• Dates from 1861-65 American Civil War
• Adopted in 1861 to distinguish it from the flag of the secessionist states, dubbed the Stars and Bars, which was similar to the US flag of that era
• Comprises a blue saltire with white stars against a red background
• The saltire is an old Christian symbol, the 13 stars represent the states in the alliance at the time
• Also known as Southern Cross
• Came to be a symbol of the South at war, the "lost cause" after the South's defeat, and heroism of white southerners
• Embraced by racist and violent Ku Klux Klan
- Washington Post, Bloomberg, AFP
