Actor and former Congressman Ben Jones defended the Confederate flag as a legitimate symbol of southern heritage in an interview today with CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield.
A Democrat, Jones portrayed Cooter Davenport on the original Dukes of Hazzard hit TV show (not the more recent Jessica Simpson movie) which ran on CBS television from 1979 to 1985. He is currently chairman of the Sons of Confederate Veterans heritage operations.
In the 1990s, Jones served four years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Georgia’s 4th Congressional District.
The fiendish hate crime committed by a deranged gunman in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17 has morphed into a nationwide discussion about whether the Confederate flag should continue to fly over the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia as well as the offensive nature of similar displays in other states.
Most Americans regard the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism. The Confederacy comprised the southern slaves states which seceded from the union and led to the Civil War. The suspect in the church massacre apparently drove a vehicle bearing Confederate flag license plates and posed in a picture waving the Confederate flag.
In the exchange with Banfield on Legal View , Jones — who noted that he marched in the civil rights movement — maintained that The Dukes of Hazzard featured the Confederate battle flag in a “positive context” and that no racism existed in Hazzard County, Georgia, the fictional area where the show took place. The Dukes famously tooled around in a 1969 Dodge Charger called the General Lee with a Confederate flag on the roof.
For many southerners, the Confederate flag represents their ancestry and DNA, Jones insisted. He added that the terrible institution of slavery existed everywhere in the U.S. and as such, slavery and racism weren’t just southern sins, but instead are American or national sins.
In a reference to the aftermath of the Civil War, Jones declared that “Through all of that, through all of those resentments, through all of that segregation, and white supremacy and all that nonsense, we’ve come through that. We’re not here to offend anybody.”
That comment was too much for Banfield who responded that “White supremacy is not nonsense. It just, not even a week ago, led to the mortal combat murders of nine innocent churchgoers.”
Jones then responded “Wait a minute. It’s not a southern sin. White supremacy is a sin. Racism is a sickness that goes on all over the world. This man doesn’t represent us…no one thinks it was not a terrible, horrible thing… y’all can’t define us by the act of a demented hater. It doesn’t connect.”
Watch the Ben Jones-Ashley Banfield clip below and draw your own conclusions as to whether Jones’ arguments make any sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEKjLrGvFds
Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s GOP governor, has called for the complete removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds, an action which will require approval from at least two-thirds of state lawmakers.
According to the New York Time s , “The fight over the flag’s placement has a long history in South Carolina. It was originally flown atop the Capitol during the administration of Gov. Fritz Hollings, a Democrat, in 1962 as the civil rights movement gained steam, ostensibly to mark the centennial of the Civil War. There was a push in the late 1990s to take it down, but the flag continued to fly above South Carolina’s copper-domed Capitol until 2000, when a bipartisan agreement was reached to move it to a Confederate memorial nearby.”
As the Inquisitr previously reported, while governor of Arkansas, former president Bill Clinton signed into law a bill that honored the Confederacy in the state flag.
[image via YouTube]