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I'm not totally up on the history of that flag in respect to SC, but it seems to me that the elected officials in SC dealt with the pressure from the Feds around 20 years ago. Since then, it hasn't been an issue and still isn't as far as the Feds are concerned.
That kind of makes the point of your post moot...don't you agree?
I guess you mean nearly 50 years ago, with the passage of the CRA and VRA that pretty much gutted the Jim Crow laws and voter suppression efforts common throughout the South?
But even if so I don't think it makes the observation moot at all. I've been through the history but that particular flag was raised atop the S.C. capitol in 1961 during a time when those raising it (the legislature and/or the Gov) were engaged in a bitter fight AGAINST extending civil rights to blacks. So that flag, that particular design, is intimately associated with state-sponsored efforts to continue the second class treatment of blacks in S.C., and that flag flew continuously over the capitol for 37 years.
Let me ask you this. Say you're invited to attend a black church in S.C. Given that flag's history, are you going to wear your Confederate Battle Flag belt buckle to the service? Unless you're extremely rude you won't because what you should know is most of not nearly all of that congregation will consider your belt buckle a symbol of past oppression by whites including their own government that only ended when the Feds forced its end. It doesn't even matter what it means to you - to those on the receiving end of centuries of state sponsored oppression, that particular symbol has a very definite meaning, and that meaning is enforced every day because that flag on your belt has been adopted by a slew of racist organizations in your state that say a return to white supremacy is their goal, the same goal the S.C. government fought to maintain when the Confederate flag was raised on the state house.
And if you say, well, the flag represents my southern pride, the response from a black congregant could be, "you mean the pride and nostalgia for a time when the state prevented me from voting, from eating in the same restaurants as you, etc. and fought a years long battle using that flag as a symbol to perpetuate that state of affairs?"