Black student sparks debate with Confederate flag

Byron Thomas, 19, a student at USCB holds a Confederate battle flag in his dormitory room Wednesday in Okatie, S.C. Byron Thomas says a class research project made him realize the flag’s real meaning has been hijacked.

Friday, December 2, 2011

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A black college student who drew complaints for displaying a Confederate flag in his dorm room window said he sees the banner as a symbol of Southern pride and not racism.

The 19-year-old student at the University of South Carolina Beaufort took the flag down at the university’s request, but he said he’s considering putting it back up after the officials relented. Byron Thomas has drawn nearly 70,000 views since he posted a video online in which he acknowledges: “I know it’s kind of weird because I’m black.”

In a telephone interview Thursday, Thomas said a class research project made him come to the belief the flag’s real meaning has been hijacked. He said he wants people to thoughtfully consider issues of race and not just knee-jerk reactions to such symbols.

“When I look at this flag, I don’t see racism. I see respect, Southern pride,” he said. “This flag was seen as a communication symbol” during the Civil War.

He said university officials asked him to take the banner down just before Thanksgiving after students and parents complained when it was seen by them on campus tours, but have since told him he can put it back up.

The freshman from North Augusta said his generation can eliminate the flag’s negative power by adopting the banner as a symbol of Southern pride.

“I’ve been getting a lot of support from people. My generation is interested in freedom of speech,” Thomas said.

But Thomas says his parents don’t like the flag and he’s concerned about their point of view, particularly since they pay his bills.

“I don’t want to make my parents mad,” he said. “I may wait until Monday to put it up.”

He said he’s unhappy about such things as labels, and he doesn’t like the term “African-American,” which makes him feel like “a half-citizen,” since he wasn’t born in Africa.

Thomas’ roommate Blane Reed, who is white, said in a separate telephone interview that he never heard any complaints after Thomas put the flag up shortly after Labor Day. Each student has a separate bedroom and share living space with three others, the 18-year-old from Walhalla, S.C., said.

He said the flag was on the inside of Thomas’ bedroom window and moved it later to the window in their common living area. But the week before Thanksgiving, Thomas was asked by his hall director to take it down from the window and put it anywhere inside the student apartment.

Thomas then posted a video on CNN’s iReport website that has logged more than 69,000 viewings. An article in The Beaufort Gazette Thursday touched off dozens of comments, both pro and con.

“I think he’s got a really good point. It’s just a flag, and in and of itself, it doesn’t have any racial meaning. It only has as much meaning as you put into it,” said Reed.

He described his roommate as a hardworking student who attends church services regularly and hasn’t let the incident interfere with his studies.

“Byron is really smart, very outgoing. He’s one of the nicest people you would ever meet and he’d give you the shirt off his back,” said Reed, a biology major.

University spokeswoman Candace Brasseur said Thursday in an email that about two-dozen students had raised the issue of the flag with the housing office or with a resident adviser. On Thursday, she forwarded an email the school had sent to its students and staff, informing them officials had asked Thomas to remove the flag “out of respect for his fellow students’ concerns.”

However, the e-mail added, because of “USCB’s firm belief in the First Amendment and its right of free speech, the University cannot and will not prohibit these flags or other symbols that our students choose to display.”

Thomas is free to return it to his window if he wishes, Brasseur said.

USC Beaufort is one of eight campuses in the University of South Carolina system and has about 1,750 students, of which about 16.5 percent are African American, according to the school web site.

More like this story

wow 1 year, 5 months ago

I am very glad that this young man is willing to be open minded and accepts people for how they treat him. That's a sign that his parents are good people who raised a child the right way. But...although Byron Thomas seems to be on the right track in some areas. He is just as confused and wrong as anyone else who tries fronting the Confederate Flag as a symbol of American pride and oneness for all. And the media should be ashamed for using this young man to help them promote hate. This ploy of "hey look at this black kid who loves the Confederate Flag" is a joke and sickens anyone with common sense. Just because some kid, who just happens to be Negro (as he doesn't like being referred to as African American)...but just because this kid has formed a dillusional view of reality. It don't change the fact that this flag is everything this kid thinks it isn't. Truth is like every good son, he may be college age, but on certain subjects he still should listen to his parents in this case as they have a lot more knowledge about the matter than he does.

The Confederate Flag is a disgrace to our nation...the Confederate Army is a disgrace to our nation. Yes they are a part of American history. But just as the 3rd Reich and those that supported Das Fuher is a disgrace to and anti Germany and Europe. So too is everything associated with the Confederacy disgraceful to America and anti American.

cinkisses 8 months, 1 week ago

how about just calling him an American? Is that really so hard to do?

asb 8 months, 1 week ago

With the Birther campaign determined to invalidate his citizenship status, in spite of ample proof of same, yes, it is hard for Grace and the rest of the "we can't really prove it but we can keep saying that Obama is a foriegn muslim agent leading a secret plan to do something horrible to destroy America." crowd to call him an American.

JMO 8 months, 1 week ago

I think cinkisses was talking about the young man in the story...not the president.

asb 8 months, 1 week ago

Oh . . . never mind . . . :)

JCLifer 8 months, 1 week ago

Free your mind Don't be so shallow Be Colorblind the rest will follow

muleman 1 year, 5 months ago

For all mis-informed people that think the civil war was all about slavery, tell me why the war was half over before the slaves were freed. The civil war was the rebellion against the oppressive federal government. States rights was the real reason the south succeded from the union, the slavery issue was thrown in later. Read your history book and you will see that the reason Lincoln freed the slaves was to stop cotton production in the south, and only applied to the southern states when it was first applied.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 5 months ago

I wonder where all this fake history stuff comes from. You should read the real history books written by history professors instead.

The "oppressive federal government" claim is a modern construction, much like Sarah Palin's claim that Paul Rever rode his horse throughout the countryside to warn the British that we weren't going to give up our guns. The romanticized version of history with all that southern gallantry and gentility is equally bogus.

Lincoln freed the slaves in the south - and only in the south - to keep France from entering the war on the south's side. France had naval power and could have broken the northern shipping blockade. England might have even been tempted since they wanted access to all that cotton.

if you look through the laws passed and the US Supreme Court Decisions issued back then, all of the so-called "states rights" arguments go back to the slavery issue which dominated United States' political history from 1800 to 1865. The big "states rights" issue was the "states rights" to permit, maintain, and spread slavery. I can provide details if you really want to go there.

The south had one big economic driver and it was cotton. Cotton farming required slaves. Nearly all the wealth of the south was tied up in slave ownership. Even the farms were worthless without slaves to work them. Texas seceded from Mexico after Mexico outlawed slavery.

That's really all there is to it.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 5 months ago

There is a good reason why most of us rely on professors for our facts and interpretations. Professors spend their whole lifetimes in academic studies. Academic studies lead to learning. Learning is a good thing, and more learning is preferable to less. If learning interferes with your pejudices, it is your prejudices that should give way. Your prejudices and suspicions about a "leftist agenda" have made you immune to learning. That is sad.

The most ironic thing about this whole argument is that Dixie.net, the website for the League of the South, had accurately described the central fallacy with the whole "states rights/tenth amendment" routine. That was, as MoDan has gone to great lengths to explain below, that the Constitution of 1789 was adopted in the name of the people. The Dixie.net people recently revised their comments, since that would obviously interfere with their prejudices.

MoDan 1 year, 5 months ago

"Not until southern states voted to disassociate themselves from the federal government did the war begin. That is absolute, undeniable fact."

South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860. By February, 1861, the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had seceded.

Lincoln's inauguration as President occurred on March 4, 1861.

Fort Sumter occurred April 12-13, 1861. "And the war came . . .."

BubbaD 8 months, 1 week ago

The teachildren's reliance on self-interpretation of math, science and history is at least entertaining. Unfortunately, they are reliably ill-informed and ill-reasoned.

wow 1 year, 5 months ago

If the Confederates didn't like the way the United States was working, they had the right to get their belongings and leave the country. They did not have the right to divide the nations land into their own little plantation. The Articles of the Confederacy were no longer what governed the south once they entered the Union.

If denying blacks equality and freedom wasn't the aim of the Confederates and some northerner's...please explain government sanctioned Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes, and Segregation were implemented after the war was over. As a matter of fact...the Civil War, WW1/WW2 and Korea had been concluded yet blacks were still treated as second class citizens. Why is that?

The Confederates were some of the earliest terrorist who got killed for attacking America and that's it.

Sequoia 8 months, 1 week ago

This is the essence of the overblown victimhood of the lost cause of the confederacy: they considered it "oppresive" for the federal government to infringe on their "property rights" to treat African people as property.

That's what "state's rights" is: the right to treat Africans as property.

It doesn't matter what this young mean "sees" in the flag, or what he "believes" it represents. It represents the right to treat him as a piece of property. He's a fool (like most 18-year-olds). He's going to regret this phase in his life someday.

MoDan 1 year, 5 months ago

“They did try to leave the country. That is what they wanted. It was their land not the feds. The states were supposed to control the federal government but, instead, the federal government became oppressive. They didn't want to take over the federal government and made no attempt to do so. The 10th amendment guaranteed the right to secede. There is no logical argument that refutes that.”

The Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Unfortunately for those who rely on the Tenth Amendment it is superceded by Article VI of the Constitution itself: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby” And it further requires: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

MoDan 1 year, 5 months ago

“Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes, and Segregation were all reactions to the loss of the war and the attempt of the federal government to fundamentally change society.” The Black Codes came in the first few years after the war. The Jim Crow laws were not enacted until after 1890. These actions instituted the system of segregation which prevailed in many states until the 1960s. They were all state laws. They were meant to codify a system of segregation which denied the rights guaranteed under the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. When the federal government “fundamentally change[d] society” in the 1950s and 1960s, it did so by applying the Constitution as clearly stated in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. When these proved inadequate, the Congress proposed the Twentieth Fourth Amendment, which the states then ratified. All actions (excepting those taken by the states with the Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws), clearly within the framework of the Constitution.

MoDan 1 year, 5 months ago

“The 10th amendment guaranteed the right to secede. There is no logical argument that refutes that.” It would seem that Article VI refutes the Tenth Amendment argument. Further proof lies in the Supreme Court case of Texas v. White decided in 1868. “The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to ‘be perpetual.’ And, when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained ‘to form a more perfect Union.’ “ But the perpetuity and indissolubility of the Union by no means implies the loss of distinct and individual existence, or of the right of self-government by the States. On the contrary, it may be not unreasonably said that the preservation of the States and the maintenance of their governments are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

MoDan 1 year, 5 months ago

“The 10th amendment guaranteed the right to secede. There is no logical argument that refutes that.” In case the previous sources are not enough, try this argument: The “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” include a preamble that notes the document sets up a government “Between the States of . . . “ and then lists the thirteen states. Article 2 of that documents notes: “Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” The preamble to the Constitution replaces the notation that the documents comes not from the states, but from “We, the People . . ..” The framers also did not include Article 2 of the Confederation in the new Constitution. They did, however, include Article VI cited previously. Article VI has a much different connotation than Article 2 of the Confederation.

MoDan 1 year, 5 months ago

“ If there had been no civil war slavery would have eventually ended.” If . . . I can make any argument I want by prefacing my statements with “If.”

MoDan 1 year, 5 months ago

Clearly the Constitution. In that last post about the Articles and Constitution, I used Article 2 for the Articles of Confederation and Article VI for the Constitution. I was contrasting the two documents. We did have a government controlled under the principle of states rights: it was the Articles of Confederation, and it was a disaster. Hence the Constitution, in which the Framers jettisoned nearly all of the states rights aspects of the Articles of Confederation.

online_editor 1 year, 5 months ago

I removed some posts that weren't legible because they included long quotations that ran off the page. I'm not sure, but perhaps copying the desired passage into a text editor that can then save it as plain text would strip out the errant, invisible formatting code. Also, if you hit "post comment" without first filling in the Captcha (verification letters), it should show you a preview of your post. That might be of assistance. --Rick Brown, online editor, News Tribune

wow 1 year, 5 months ago

The articles of the Confederation was the document of old and was and is therefore not applicable as things progressed to be governed under the rules of the United States Constitution. Therefore, even though there was then and is now a means for people to resolve there governmental discourse. There was never then, is not now and will never be an allowance for a disgruntled group of racist to take American towns, cites and or states. The Confederates could have taken their personal property and gone to another country, but they did not have the right to Divide the American land mass.

As for this young man....I appreciate his views, but I also know that he is wrong and very confused in a scary way. I'm glad that he is willing to live in the now and not the past. But I'm confused why this young man does not see the evil symbol he is promoting.

spelchek 8 months, 1 week ago

"There was never then, is not now and will never be an allowance for a disgruntled group of racist to take American towns, cites and or states." -- Southern Democrats?

asb 8 months, 1 week ago

. . . who are now all republicans . . .

spelchek 8 months, 1 week ago

Well, that's the platform you run on and believe. Democrats (the south) wanted slavery, fought for it, lost, then fought the civil rights movement. Big time promoters of segregation too. As much as dem's try to rewrite or erase history it just doesn't seem to work. Proof? Dem's desire to hide the confederate flag at all costs. The guy in the story doesn't take offense and that just doesn't sit well with dems. I bet your calling him an Uncle Tom right now.

Harakazu 8 months, 1 week ago

The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

We have this right to protect us, in case the Federal Gov. Were to become oppressive. The Southern States were merely using this right in their defense.

As for telling the South that they should have packed up their things and left, My country did do this, My Country is The Republic of Texas, upon entering the united stated the Rep. Of Texas, had it in writing that at any time Texas wished to leave the Union it would be allowed. Instead the Federal Gov, Upon secession of the Southern states, Wanted to keep its forts and military bases to Occupy the South. any Country in their right mind would fight to keep a foreign military from occupying them.

You can not tell a state full of people that If they don't like it to leave their land and go elsewhere. They will stand up for themselves.

spelchek 8 months, 1 week ago

I think the confederate flag is pretty. It would look good on the roof of my orange dodge charger. I wouldn't mean no harm. I could straighten some curves or flatten some hills. You know, just make my way the only way I know how.

asb 8 months, 1 week ago

Oh Daisy, where are't thou curves . . .

connor 8 months, 1 week ago

We could argue the driving reasons behind the Civil-War for decades and get no where, they have already been arguing it for a century and a half anyway. The truth is each State and soldier had their own reasons for participating from being hoodwinked by rich Southern planters or greedy Northern industrialist to believing in spiritual hustlers or revenge against raiders both Northern and Southern. None of that matters in this particular flag scenario.

What matters is that any flag displayed that is not officially sanctioned by a government of that area at the moment is nothing more than an individuals freedom of expression. We may not agree with it but if you are going to remove one than you need to remove them all even those which have official sanction in some other country. No more black panther flags, no more Mexican flags or nazi flags or rainbow flags or Gadsen flags etc.

There are many flags out there being displayed that I personally dislike what they represent or are generally believed to represent but to call for the removal of any one of them is violating the freedom of speech I value. To try and pick and choose still violates that freedom and makes me a hypocrite besides.

So let him display his flag and stop trying to force your personal values onto others.

asb 8 months, 1 week ago

Correct, up until your last phrase. The Union was held together legally. Courts have always upheld that. Federal, norther courts yes, but that's how that works. We stopped honoring the Wiemier Republic in Germany as soon as it was put down. The orders and laws of the Third Reich were put to bed with their boogey things. The South was forgiven, their structure, put on the curb, and their courts abolished or re-grooved back into the Union. The winners write the rules. Was the Confederation's original mechanism of seccession legal? Doesn't matter, the Union won, the United States was preserved, and the states where owning people just to grow cotton were beaten like the dumb dogs they had been taken over from. Your people lost the war Grace.

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