From: torpenhow@charter.net
To: humanresource@savannahnow.com
http://savannahnow.com/column/2010-05-30/political-notebook-roy-barnes-treads-lightly-around-flag-poll-these-days
Greetings. I’m reading your article "Political Notebook: Roy Barnes treads lightly around the flag poll these days" and curious about something. You state "While many whites saw it as a symbol of Southern heritage, blacks saw it as one of segregation, discrimination and disenfranchisement." Please explain something: how was it determined that there was a measurable, meaningful proportion of blacks who felt this way, and how it was reasoned that this outweighed the wishes of everybody else?
I was there and politically active at the time. The NAACP, which can hardly be taken as representative of black life and thought, suddenly chose to make the flag a big "issue" at a time when the organization was down for the count — mostly thanks to its own headline-grabbing internal corruption. As one unanimous voice, the media immediately took up the NAACP’s wail as one of your industry’s main focuses. Where’s the diversity in that?
The politicians fell on their swords in response, many of them politically perishing over the issue rather than be branded racist. They didn’t ask "how many blacks", "who says", or "why the matter most" Nobody in media or politics has ever seemed interested in the subject, but I think highly germane and never too late.
Couldn’t find your email address on the article or your page — used the first email address I could find in the site.
Thank you — Nelson Waller
