by Dimitri Dube
Dallas Criminal/Civil Defense attorney
www.dimitridubepc.com

This past week, in Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Supreme Court decided that the State of Texas could refuse to print designer license plates bearing the Confederate flag. The Court reasoned that the license plates amounted to government speech and endorsement of the Confederate flag. As such, the state could refuse to print these designer flags because it could not be forced to endorse a message it found to be abhorrent.

Every morning when I drop off my kids at camp, I pass Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans. This weekend, I visited the beaches in Biloxi, Mississippi and was greeted by the state flag that included a Confederate flag. In the weeks since the Charleston shooting, we have heard of several examples of the Confederate flag on state grounds, and a countless number of roads, bridges, schools named after Confederate generals and politicians.

The juxtaposition of the Supreme Court decision in Walker at the same time the nation is embroiled in this conversation reminds us that every time we see the Confederate flag or a bridge, road or school named after a Confederate leader, that state is making the conscious decision to endorse the message of the Confederacy.

And as Ta-Nehisi Coates reminded us recently, the message of the Confederacy was a message of white supremacy. Take for instance, this quote from Jefferson Davis:

You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.

Consequently, as we fight to remove these statues, streets, and flags honoring the Confederacy, we must confront these politicians with the messages of white supremacy espoused by Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and the Confederate States of America. We must ask them whether they are comfortable with their state Government endorsing these messages as their own. Because, every time I pass Jefferson Davis Parkway, I hear that message of white supremacy loud and clear. And the Supreme Court has made clear that the states and politicians can make the choice to reject these messages.

So, yes. Ban the Confederate flag. We can do this.