“It offends my friend, John King,” the white, middle-aged, Republican legislator pointed dramatically toward the black lawmaker as she pleaded from the floor of the South Carolina legislature.

“It offends my friend, Reverend Neal,” her voice rose to a shout, so fraught with emotion it appeared she would be unable to finish.

“It offends my friend Mia McLeod!” the lawmaker, State Representative Jenne Horne, pointed at yet a third black legislator and demanded action.

Late at night on C-SPAN, two weeks after the slaying of a black pastor and eight members of his flock in the sanctuary of the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston by a white supremacist, I had chanced on the televised debate over removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House grounds. Sensing that I was witnessing an historic turning point in what I understood of the South and a moment meaningful in my own life, I sat riveted by the unexpected emotion of the speaker. Continue reading →