Killer Mike Calls For The Removal Of The Confederate Flag

As the nation still reels from the terroristic violence of last week's deadly shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, Killer Mike has addes his voice to the many who are calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from many of its current posts. Specifically, Mike addressed the flag's presence at the South Carolina capitol building, stressing that its Civil War-era symbology "should be forever wiped from the memory, because that side lost."

Mike offered up a lengthy, eloquent statement which was published by FADER. Across its multiple paragraphs the MC both acknowledges that the Confederate flag may in fact, for some, represent an important strain of Southern family heritage. But that's not enough to justify its brazen use, especially on government-sanctioned property, he rightly notes:

An army took on the Union, an army lost. That nation, the Confederate states, lost. And if that flag—in terms of publicly or state-sponsored things, or local or county or city-sponsored things—should be forever wiped from the memory, because that side lost. If your great great grandfather participated on t

he Confederate side and you hold some sentimental value to that, and you want to fly the flag and hang their picture up in your home, that's fine. But it should not be on anything that taxpayers pay for, because taxpayers are a part of the Union not the Confederacy. It has no place in the building, no place on the building, no place around the building.

Later in his statement, Mike speculates that there may be certain corporate forces keeping Confederate symbology alive. The MC concludes:

As a person who is a part of a minority group that has been terrorized, I feel like that minority group should seek every way possible to end that terror upon themselves. I feel like that terror is state sanctioned and that this minority group should deal with the state in terms of the voting booth. In the core of me I feel like, economically, there are corporations that have backed politicians that have kept the Confederate flag high and that have allowed the premise of white supremacy to stand. I think that [people] should attack those corporations economically by withholding money from them.

Killer Mike's entire statement is a fine piece of measured, keen rebuttal to those who use "heritage" as a blanket justification for the flag's use. We strongly suggest you read it (twice) over at FADER.