On Monday, Diane Rehm had a panel on her show consisting of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Daniel Webster from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and Georgetown University Law School professor Paul Butler. One of the callers to the show brought up, not in a particularly hostile manner, the “Southern legacy” argument about the Confederate flag.
Butler let the caller have it right between the eyes:
I have no respect for your ancestors. As far as your ancestors are concerned, I shouldn’t be a law professor at Georgetown. I should be a slave. That’s why they fought that war. I don’t understand what it means to be proud of a legacy of terrorism and violence. Last week at this time, I was in Israel. The idea that a German would say, you know, that thing we did called the Holocaust, that was wrong, but I respect the courage of my Nazi ancestors. That wouldn’t happen. The reason people can say what you said in the United States, is because, again, black life just doesn’t matter to a lot of people.
Boom. Thank you. More of this, please. I believe we’re done here.