South Carolina’s Hurt — and Challenge
by Jordan Cooper
I know it hurts the bottom of the people’s hearts who came before us in South Carolina to see that we are removing a symbol of the experiences of the residents of S.C. The Confederate Battle Flag is likely to come down and be put in another museum in S.C. hopefully.
The feverish efforts to remove Ben Tillman’s statue are coming to a climax, too. Then the question is what is next for SC?
Will there be statues for Gov. Haley and US Senator Scott? I hope so. Or will there be overhauls to the uniforms of our military college?
Our military academy? The oldest state police agency in this state? And to go even further the uniforms of our treasured Gamecocks, Tigers, or Cougars? I hope not.
These groups have had a copious amount of instances of racism, gender bias, unneeded violence, and other issues relating to what is right/wrong. Those issues will continue based on our defective nature as homo sapiens. In self-defense of our state as South Carolinians, we must unconditionally take responsibility for the contributions of our citizens and those alike.
We are smarter than what those national rankings think we are. Education is like the game of golf when it comes to scoring So, we can only be a few putts back of the leader by being on the bottom of the 50 states. So we must think of ourselves in a better light.
We shouldn’t be following the trends of other states and their tendencies on how they react to highly emotional issues. We should always try to be trendsetters and truth-tellers based on all the facts we can handle. The inconvenient truths of the vexed pasts of our state has to direct us in our impulses for the land of our state named after Carolus. Who can we run to to find the realities of our state?
It should be our religious centers, libraries, and journalistic mediums. That trifecta will help our state become a fitting museum in our minds before we take a journey through it to recap what we witnessed along the way. Truly knowing our history will help us better accept the unknown feelings we may face — without rejecting the inheritance of our state’s history by distancing ourselves from important historical instances in our time.
Jordan Cooper is a USC graduate who played football under Coach Steve Spurrier. He was the youngest African American to serve on a gubernatorial campaign staff at the age of 13 under then Congressman Bobby Jindal as his Co-Chair for Blacks for Jindal. He was the first African American to serve in the Gov. and Lt. Gov’s offices in S.C. as a Constituent Correspondent and Special Assistant respectively (Haley/Bauer). He was also the youngest to serve in on a GOP presidential campaign staff in America and youngest black Co-Chair of a Congressional campaign (Bauer for Congress 2012).