While appearing on the Wednesday edition of MSNBC’s All In, guest and Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson argued during a discussion with host Chris Hayes about the Confederate flag that Americans “have all been infected by this legacy of racial inequality” and “haven't learned how to manage the shame and the guilt” of slavery and racism.
Hayes first asked Stevenson for his thoughts about the growing number of public officials calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from public spaces and he responded by declaring that: “I mean, everybody in this country has inherited a burden. We have all been infected by this legacy of racial inequality.”
Continuing on that theme, Stevenson explained how “[a] narrative of racial difference was created during slavery and rather than confront it and condemn it, we've tolerated it and in the South, we've celebrated it.”
Later, Stevenson called for the removal of not only the Confederate flag, but the renaming of high schools named after Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and nearly 60 statues in Montgomery, Alabama before talking about “transitional justice”:
Transitional justice means you tell the truth about the problems and you reconcile yourself to that truth as they're doing in Germany. As they tried to do in South Africa. As they're talking about in Rwanda. We never did that in this country. Because of it, we are still burdened and I think really corrupted, I think, by implicit bias and presumptions of dangerousness in guilt and that will change when we talk honestly about what these symbols and that legacy has done to us.
The airing of grievances didn’t stop there as Stevenson began his final point by lamenting that Americans “don’t talk about” the history of racism along with “how to manage the shame and guilt” that he claimed to be associated with this. It was at that moment Stevenson also called for all license plates in Alabama to be changed: “In Alabama every license plate has “Heart of Dixie” on it and it’s an offensive concept for many people of color.”
The relevant parts of the transcript from MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes on June 24 can be found below.
MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes
June 24, 2015
8:09 p.m. Eastern
BRYAN STEPHENSON: I mean, everybody in this country has an inherited a burden. We have all been infected by this legacy of racial inequality. A narrative of racial difference was created during slavery and rather than confront it and condemn it, we've tolerated it and in the South, we've celebrated it and these images and symbols have created some very, very real problems, including this continuing dangerousness of guilt that gets assigned to people of color. So, attacking these images, taking down these images, I think it is a critically important first step if we're going to actually deal with our history in an honest and meaningful way.
CHRIS HAYES: You know, there’s also some lesson that strikes me and you're someone who works day in, day out on behalf of folks who are on the wrong end of our criminal justice system and often on the wrong side of the color line, that things that seem impossible for years, I mean, these flags we see across the southern states, whether they're on license plates or official buildings or monuments, they weren't placed there casually. I mean, this was the product of a tremendous capital will and then, all of a sudden, at 8:20, the governor says, “yeah, yeah, I think it's time to take it down.” It’s a reminder that sometimes victories in long fought battles can come much quicker than you realize.
(....)
STEPHENSON: I mean, Alabama still celebrates Jefferson Davis' birthday as a state holiday. Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday. We don't have Martin Luther King Day. We have Martin Luther King/Robert E. Lee Day. We have a state constitution that still prohibits of black and white kids from going to school together, complete unenforceable, but it’s in there because we haven't been able to get the state to take it out of the constitution through a statewide referendum. So, this really is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole landscape is littered with these monuments and markers. We’ve got 59 in Montgomery. The two largest high schools are Jefferson Davis High and Robert E. Lee High and not a word about slavery. Not a word about the terrorism and lynching that really shifted the demographic geography of this country. Not a word about the humiliation that people had to tolerate all during the decades of the Civil rights era. We just want to celebrate the happy moments and not deal with the reality of that's not what transitional justice is. Transitional justice means you tell the truth about the problems and you reconcile yourself to that truth as they're doing in Germany. As they tried to do in South Africa. As they're talking about in Rwanda. We never did that in this country. Because of it, we are still burdened and I think really corrupted, I think, by implicit bias and presumptions of dangerousness in guilt and that will change when we talk honestly about what these symbols and that legacy has done to us.
(....)
STEPHENSON: Well, we've been practicing silence about this history for so long. We don't talk about this history. We haven't learned how to manage the shame and the guilt. We haven't dealt with it and so, we just deny it and you don't give an inch. That's why you don't take down the flag. That’s why you don’t step back, In Alabama every license plate has “Heart of Dixie” on it and it’s an offensive concept for many people of color and so the business community was kind of pushing this issue. They got it on the referendum. The political leaders said nothing about it because we don't know how to deal with this in a kind of honest way and so, the people kept it in. In 2012, I actually think that part of the increase of support had a lot to do with the election of Barack Obama and this feeling that people are losing go their control and so, we've got a lot of work to do in many states in this country.
