KJ Wright relieved that Mississippi can move forward after flag change

[Blitz]

Getty Images

Seahawks linebacker KJ Wright wants to be proud of his home state.

And while things might not be perfect in Mississippi, the decision to change the state’s flag to remove the old Confederate battle flag is in his mind a step forward.

“My first reaction was, ‘Finally’,” Wright said, via Ben Arthur of SeattlePI.com “’Thank you for realizing what that flag means to black people, what that flag means to people like myself, what it stood for.’ I personally thought everybody understood the context behind it, what the flag represented. It represented hatred, it represented supremacy, it represented pro-slavery. That’s how I interpreted it. And it made a lot of people uncomfortable.”

Mississippi was the last state to feature the Confederate flag, and for Wright the history is not so far removed.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Wright said. “It’s a step to making everything better for everyone .. My Grandma’s grandma was a slave, and growing up, you hear those stories . . . My grandma, she went through segregation. She went through the Civil Rights Movement. That was some serious stuff. . . . This stuff isn’t brand new. Like, this stuff just recently happened, . . . So to see simple steps made in the right direction is really big for the state of Mississippi.

“Whatever comes out [of this], I’m going to be proud to say I’m from Mississippi. Because right now, it’s kind of been tough. People ask, ‘Where you from?’ And I say, ‘Mississippi.’ And they be like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go there.’ And it shouldn’t be like that. It shouldn’t be that sad. It shouldn’t be that pitiful. So we’re definitely headed in the right direction as a state.”

Wright, who grew up in Olive Branch, Miss., and played at Mississippi State, said it was far too common a sight as he grew up to see the flag flying in front of homes or out of the back of a truck.

“It’s extremely uncomfortable and extremely sad that people would represent that because you know what [the Confederate symbol] means,” Wright explained. “There’s no getting around it. There’s absolutely no getting around it. You’d see Klan members with their white hoodies on waving that flag. You saw the Confederate soldiers had that when they were fighting the Union soldiers for slavery. It’s pretty blatant, and there’s no getting around it. So it was extremely uncomfortable as a black man [being around that]. When you see that, you definitely steer clear of those people.

“It wasn’t just race wars where I was from, but there was just certain mindsets that have been passed down from generation to generation. It was just sad. It’s time to stop it. It’s time to stop putting poison into kids’ minds about black people, gay people, Hispanic people, Muslim people. It’s time to cut it out.”

And while it might be just a flag, the change obviously carries a greater weight for Wright, and a hope for the future.