NEWS

Jeb Bush: Flag is ‘racist’ symbol

Tim Smith
tcsmith@greenvillenews.com

COLUMBIA – In his first visit to South Carolina since nine people were shot to death in a historic black church in Charleston by a white gunman, GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush said the Confederate battle flag is a “racist” symbol that should be lowered in any state “that is aspirational.”

Bush also said he feels the Charleston shootings are more an issue of what happens when someone loses his connection to others and of mental health than of gun control.

The former two-term governor of Florida met privately with about 40 pastors in Charleston Monday and discussed the flag, the shootings, his faith and other issues, he said.

He later discussed his feelings about the flag and the shootings at a gathering of employees at the West Columbia plant of Nephron Pharmaceutical Corp., which is based in Orlando.

His remarks come three days after President Barack Obama delivered a stirring eulogy in Charleston for a pastor and senator killed in the shootings, asking the nation to renew efforts at racial healing and to begin a conversation on gun violence.

Obama also applauded Gov. Nikki Haley for asking lawmakers to remove the flag from a pole on the Statehouse grounds, calling the flag “a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation.” The Legislature is expected to begin that debate when it returns to Columbia next week.

The man charged in the shootings, Dylann Storm Roof, had a Confederate flag license plate and online photos showed him waving Confederate flags and burning or standing on the American flag. Police have said the shootings were racially motivated.

Bush, who has previously indicated he thought the flag should come down, echoed those sentiments Monday, when a worker asked him his feelings about the flag.

Bush said in his first or second year as Florida’s governor, when Georgia was debating what to do about a Confederate flag on its capitol grounds, “it dawned on me that Florida had a Confederate flag on its capitol grounds.”

So he said he “decided to do something politically incorrect” and ordered it and some other flags moved to a museum.

“The symbols that have divided the South in many ways, the symbols that were used in the most recent modern history, not perhaps at the beginning, the symbols were racist,” he said. “And if you are trying to lean forward rather than live in the past, you want to eliminate the barriers that create disagreements, and so I did.”

Bush said he thought it was “the right thing to do” and applauded Haley for calling for the flag to come down.

He said South Carolinians are proud of the businesses they have recruited and the jobs that have been created.

“Anything that gets in the way of that vision, while doing it respectfully, ought to be put aside and allow South Carolina to move forward,” he said. “And I would say that about any state that is aspirational in nature.”

In fact, the shootings and Haley’s call for the flag lowering have triggered conversations throughout the South about retiring Confederate flags or symbols of the Confederacy. Businesses also have joined in the debate, with some of the nation’s leading retailers announcing they would no longer sell any Confederate-themed items.

While Obama has called for a national conversation about gun violence, Bush said gun violence in the nation is down.

“It breaks my heart to see how someone, a racist, would go into a church and violate the sanctity of that church and kill innocent people,” he said. “I think the big issue is why do people reach a point where their hatred overcomes any other impulse.”

He said one of the common features of cases of mass killings is “the lack of connection with the rest of us.”

A second issue, he said, is mental health.

“It’s not necessarily any of the gun proposals out there,” he said. “I’m not sure any of them would have created any chance at stopping the violence. Reconnecting all of us together so you can identify people before they get so despondent and isolated that they would create these atrocious, horrific acts would be a part of it.”

He said the nation also should be looking at access to mental health, while protecting privacy, “so that as a society we know when people are on the wrong track and that we identify the kind of therapy they can get to get back on track before it’s too late.”

Bush said his meeting with the pastors, who came from across the state and across different faiths, was a “good dialogue.”

He said the group talked about the recent U.S. Supreme Court conversation concerning gay marriage, about the flag and about the shootings.

“They asked questions about my faith,” he said. “It was a nice conversation.”

Bush was asked a litany of questions by the pharmaceutical employees, from education to foreign policy to jobs and various hot spots around the globe, from ISIS in the Middle East to the South China Sea.

Bill Kennedy, owner of Nephron, said while he and his wife, Lou, president of the firm, were happy to host Bush, they have not selected a favorite in the presidential race. He said he firm is willing to host other candidates, if they ask, especially U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.