Call it legal but offensive driving

Commercial Appeal ^ | February 5, 2004 | Wendi C. Thomas

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Call it legal but offensive driving

By Wendi C. Thomas
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February 5, 2004

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is the latest group in Tennessee to get a specialty license plate, one that includes the Confederate flag logo.

The license plates remind me of a T-shirt I had in college that said: "It's a Black Thing, You Wouldn't Understand."

It was an accouterment of my militant phase, when I taped a poster of Malcolm X to my dorm room wall, when I badgered the university in a futile attempt to get it to divest from South Africa, when my friends laughingly dubbed me "Wendela."

My mom wasn't too fond of the "It's a Black Thing" shirt. She worried that others, mainly white people, would see the shirt and think I was a racist.

Any assumption would be unfair, I argued. Clearly, I'm much more than a pithy saying on a piece of cotton, and I had no time for those who would reduce me to a slogan.

I dismissed the conversation as yet another piece of evidence in the case of Wise Young Wendi vs. Woefully Out-of-Touch Mom.

After my indignation faded, as it usually did, I was left with a question.

Was this shirt and its message so important to me that I was willing to risk being labeled, at the least, indifferent to the feelings of white people, and, at worst, a racist?

I decided that no, it wasn't that important. And I got rid of the shirt. I knew it probably would make many white people uncomfortable. And while the comfort of white people wasn't and still isn't my chief concern, it could stifle any honest conversations about race between my classmates and me.

Any reaction my T-shirt provoked is tame compared with the visceral gut-punch many have at the sight of the Confederate flag.

So I have a question for the Sons of Confederate Veterans and others who will spend an extra $35 on these Confederate-flag emblazoned plates.

Is this flag so important to you that you'll risk being seen as, at the least, incredibly insensitive to black people, and, at the worst, a racist?

In the flag's defense, the SCV's Tennessee Division commander Skip Earle of Franklin told The Associated Press, "We have really changed people's minds on what people think the flag stands for."

No, commander, you haven't. When I - and most people - see the flag, it reminds them of a time when people who looked like the Sons of Confederate Veterans could own people who looked like me.

Worse, the flag has been co-opted by white supremacy groups, while those who claim the flag is merely an emblem of a fight for states' rights look away, their hands stuck in the pockets of their Wranglers.

I believe the SCV has a right to these plates, just as I had a right to wear my T-shirt.

And I have to believe that those who hold this emblem so dear are aware of the risks - the chance that others will see them, see the flag, and wonder if they're a white supremacist or a prejudiced wacko.

And that's a risk they're more than willing to take.

Contact Wendi C. Thomas at (901) 529-5896 or send an e-mail.

[Lazamataz]

SHE's black???

Whatever. America is getting silly.

[avg_freeper]

They took the hatchet? First wire cutters and now this.