Tate Reeves’ tired defense for doing nothing to change Mississippi’s Confederate-themed state flag is based on keeping campaign promises.
When pressed by reporters this week as to why — given the widespread movement for additional progress on racial equality following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police — he is not forcefully advocating for changing the flag, the first-term governor said it was because he did not want to be one of those politicians who promise one thing during an election season, then act differently once in office.
Reeves, when he was successfully running for governor last year, stuck to the same position he held while he was lieutenant governor for two terms: namely, that if the flag is to be changed, it would have to be done by popular referendum, not by legislative action. He says that since voters in 2001 overwhelming voted to keep the 1894 flag as the state’s official banner, if they have changed their minds, then they can push for another referendum and prove it.
Consistency is often a valued trait in a person, but when circumstances change dramatically, consistency is not to be commended but rather to be ridiculed. As the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
As Reeves has learned from his first five months in office, leadership demands flexibility in times of radical change. He’s been navigating through the worst pandemic the country has seen in a century. At times, he felt he had to go against his instincts as a business-friendly Republican in order to save lives and keep the state’s hospitals from being overwhelmed. His campaign promises to grow Mississippi’s economy had to be shelved, and he joined in orchestrating the worst economic crash in our lifetimes because he decided the alternative prospect was worse. He adapted — some will argue too much, others too little — but he adapted.
The coast-to-coast outpouring of anger and frustration over George Floyd’s death — and other instances of police brutality against African Americans before it — also cries for some adaptation. The flag, with its prominent Confederate emblem, is a symbolic place for Mississippi to start.
The 1894 banner has been tainted by its connections to slavery, segregation and white supremacist groups. Whatever value it had as a reminder of those who fought bravely, though misguidedly, in the Civil War has been drowned out by its overwhelmingly negative associations.
It is an impediment to racial progress and an insult to a large segment of the state’s population. Mississippi is the last state with the Rebel insignia in its flag. Hanging onto it mars Mississippi’s national image.
Reeves is unlikely to be a champion of changing the flag. But at least he can gracefully get out of the way from others – including lawmakers from here in the Pine Belt – who should step up and take on this issue through the legislative process to avoid a possibly ugly ballot battle.
The flag is going to change.
It might as well happen now.
