![]() ![]() The move came with calls for change from administrators at both Ole Miss and Mississippi State, but it lacked real consequences. On Thursday, the SEC announced that will consider barring league-sponsored championship events in Mississippi if the state flag is not changed. The flag has not flown on the campuses of any of the state’s eight public universities in years. North Carolina’s so-called HB2 law led to NCAA men’s basketball tournament games being played in Greenville, S.C., in 2017 instead of Greensboro, N.C. It’s not waiting for the students to be the leaders and then the NCAA to come behind.”įive years ago, the NCAA took a stand for LGBTQ rights, invoking a similar ban on predetermined sites for its events in states that passed laws aimed at limiting protections for people in those communities. “Leadership is about influencing and modifying the behavior of others. “They (the NCAA) are following the trail, which is contradictory to leadership,” said Fritz Polite, vice president of opportunity development at Shenandoah University and member of the Drake Group, a college sports watchdog. ![]() In some cases they have called for the renaming of buildings and removal of Confederate images. On campuses from Clemson to UCLA, college athletes have led demonstrations and marches. The decision from the NCAA’s Board of Governors comes on the heels of two weeks of nationwide protests and rallies against racial injustice and police brutality sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while being detained by police in Minneapolis. There can be no place within college sports where any student-athlete is demeaned or unwelcome,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said. If Mississippi doesn’t change course quickly, it might find that not only is losing the chance to host college championships, but it in the game of our nation’s racist past versus our optimistic future, it may also end up being America’s biggest loser.Īnd that is a game the state shouldn’t want to play.“We must do all we can to ensure that NCAA actions reflect our commitment to inclusion and support all our student-athlete. In bringing the issue of the Mississippi flag to the nation’s attention, the SEC shows it is not playing ball with a state that won’t let go of it’s offensive symbols. A greater number of protests and boycotts seem imminent, especially in the current environment in which activism around issues of racial justice are dominating the national conversation. As a result, the repudiation of Confederate and racially insensitive symbols in public places, as well as across American culture, are being roundly repudiated and changed.īy refusing to change its flag, Mississippi risks not only irresponsibly holding on to a symbol of the past that many of its citizens and Americans find deeply troubling, but also its future ability to create economic opportunity in the state for all of its residents. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black individuals over the past several months, and the protests that have followed, many white Americans are coming to terms with the legacy of slavery in American history, as well the continuing repercussions of systemic racism on Black Americans. The issue of Mississippi’s state flag also stands in contrast to the national reconsideration of how symbols of the Confederacy are displayed around the country. ![]() The last state to make such a change was Georgia, which adopted a new flag in 2003 after coming under increased pressure from business and other organizations threatening to boycott the state. In 2015, South Carolina, which was the first state to secede from the Union, removed the Confederate flag from flying on its capital grounds following the racist mass shooting by Dylann Roof in a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina. Mississippi is the only state that was part of the Confederacy and has not chosen to remove the rebel insignia from it’s flag. ![]()
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