MSNBC host Chris Hayes challenged former governor and current South Carolina congressman Mark Sanford on the decision to fly the Confederate flag over the state’s capitol building, even as mourners gathered Thursday for the victims of the mass shooting at a historically black church in Charleston.
Hayes called the flag a symbol of “tyranny,” “white supremacy” and “domination.”
“I can’t but think of how awful it must be, if you’re someone in mourning in that church, with that history,” said Hayes.
The alleged shooter, Dylann Storm Roof, had a Facebook photo that shows him sitting astride a car with a custom “Confederate States of America” license plate. Roof has reportedly said his express purpose Wednesday night was to kill black people.
Waving his hands in the direction of the capitol, Hayes said: “That flag that was apparently beloved by this alleged gunman, as a symbol of violence and domination … how can you make sense of your state actually fully embracing you and seeing you in this moment of grief when that thing is flying on those grounds?”
Sanford laid out the origins of the historical debate over the flag and said that it was an “imperfect” political compromise that was the “best that could be done at that time.”
The Confederate flag is “a symbol of tyranny, it’s a symbol of white supremacy; it’s a symbol of domination” to many people, Hayes said.
“It is,” conceded Sanford. “But again, to another population in this state, it’s a symbol of heritage, it’s a symbol of state rights, it’s a symbol of my great great grandfather [who] died” in a Civil War battle.
“The original meaning of that symbol, and what [the suspect] did, those are not accidentally adjacent,” said a passionate Hayes.
“But they’re no more adjacent to me or you to than they are to so many people walking Calhoun Street right now,” said Sanford.
“Calhoun Street!” said Hayes. “That’s my point!”
Sanford laughed a bit, no doubt recalling that John C. Calhoun was a South Carolina statesman who vigorously opposed the abolition of slavery, even writing an essay called “Slavery a Positive Good.”
“Well, the point is there’s a lot of heritage here,” said Sanford, reaching out to Hayes.
Sanford listed off African-American appointees he had made: “You do what you can do,” he said.
Hayes rebutted that Sanford had said in 2008 he wasn’t going to spend his political capital on the debate over the flag and would instead focus on his agenda. “It struck me as one of these eminently practical things,” said Hayes, arguing that although it makes sense to focus on the real over a symbol, the people on the street believe there’s a connection between the mass shooting and whatever is “keeping that flag rooted in that soil.”
Sanford said he respectfully disagrees, and said the suspected shooter is “deranged, diabolical, go down the list.”
Hayes questioned whether the flag would come down in Sanford’s lifetime: “Are your grandkids going to be … having this conversation about that symbol flying over that state capitol?”
“That I don’t know,” replied Sanford. He said he first wanted to see “appropriate mourning” for his friend S.C. state legislator Clementa Pinckney and the eight other people who died in the tragedy.
