The conscience of the coin

So Mississippi will excise the wink to white supremacy in its state flag, and here is more Erasing Of History or Political Correctness or whatever fiction those who wink themselves choose to advance.

Truth is, this is not so much about erasing history as it is restoring it. The ones who did the erasing went to their reward a hundred and more years ago, comforted by the assumption they would rest for eternity in the shade of Lee and Jackson and other monuments to neo-Confederate revisionism.

That came to be after the Klan and other Confederate dead-enders violently killed Reconstruction and birthed Jim Crow, which was just slavery with its shoes on. And with it came this odd notion that the War was about states' rights and federal overreach and the tyranny of a government hell-bent on telling everyone how to live.

Which, for the states of the Confederacy, included the proposition that human beings of color were not human beings at all, but property. And that whites were the superior race, and we'll mount Lee and Jackson in the town square and put the Stars and Bars on our state flags to remind y'all of that.

Corrective measures had to wait a good long time, but at last they're coming. And as usual in America, it's straight cash that's greasing the wheel.

Don't be fooled. When Mississippi lawmakers voted Sunday to remove the Stars and Bars from the corner of their state flag, it wasn't because they had a blinding revelation or a sudden attack of conscience. It was, at least partly, because of something a gentleman named Greg Sankey said a week ago.

Sankey, you see, is the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. And what he said was the SEC would no longer bring any championship events to Mississippi until the state got rid of that vile little wink in its flag. And with those events, of course, would go the revenue they generate.

One day later, the NCAA joined in, expanding its Confederate flag policy to prohibit its own championship events from states continuing to cling to white supremacy's standard of choice.

And there went some more potential dollars flapping out the window.

And a week later, the Mississippi lege decides, by golly, maybe after 155 years it's time we let go the symbol of a dead quasi-nation built on oppression and murder.

Funny how that works.