Why are southern states celebrating the house divided?

This morning's USA Today ran a story: Confederate group fights for state specialty plates. The story is partly about the efforts of a non-profit organization, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), to market Confederate-inspired license plates through state divisions of motor vehicles.

According to the story, SCV has succeeded in marketing these plates in nine states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi,North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. A Florida program was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge because it gave "unfettered direction to engage in viewpoint discrimination. The state legislature there has not made a decision to rework their statutes to allow the plates. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board did not approve a Confederate-inspired plate, though the SCV has grounds to appeal the decision; only eight of the nine board members were present. The SCV's Kentucky office wants to collect all monies towards Confederate-inspired plates in advance of production, as the state permitted the sponsor of a Lincoln Bicentennial plate to do four years ago.

I grew up in New Jersey and admittedly I have never lived in a state that was once a member of the Confederacy. Aside from the obvious issues that led the nation into civil war--secession and slavery--it bothers me when people want to celebrate a nation that was a house divided, especially now, during very difficult economic times. It bothers me more when a group asks state governments to be a complicit partner in the celebration.

I am not a lawyer, but I believe that there is a difference between private speech and government-sponsored speech. If the SCV sold license plate frames or produced front bumper plates to be sold in states where a front bumper plate is not mandated then there is nothing a citizen could do to stop them. This is protected speech. It may offend many, but still it is privately funded.

But in this case the states are seceeding, not from the nation, but in their endorsement of the Confederacy by allowing their motor vehicle offices to manufacture and help market the plates, especially in states that have a large African American population.

According to the recent U.S. Census, there are slightly more than 39 million African Americans living in the country. Of this total, more than 14.1 million reside in the nine states that have permitted the issuance of these plates.

The additions of Florida, Kentucky and Texas would permit the marketing of these plates into three states with a total of 6.1 million African American residents. These plates would thus be sold in the states where the majority of African Americans live. Equally significant: Florida and Texas have the second and fourth-largest African-American populations in the country.

I also find it interesting that, with the exception of Maryland and North Carolina, these states are led by Republican governors. I wonder what history books those governors have been reading. In the early years of Reconstruction free blacks helped bring the Republican Party into power in the South; it was the Democrats who took a more conservative view on civil rights and voting rights for nearly a century.

Supporters of the Confederate plates say that their intention is to honor the service of military veterans who served the Confederate cause. While it is not fair to make inferences, I have to ask if these same people also want to honor the rights those men fought for. I leave it to them to answer that question.

In the meantime I would hope that no more state governments join in to celebrate an era of a house divided, an indentured class, and a lost cause by permitting the manufacture, sales and issuance of these plates.