Mississippi can do what Mississippi wants, but the overwhelming vote there Tuesday to keep a state flag dominated by the Confederate battle cross is a clear instance of “can” overcoming “should.” With 65 percent of Mississippians voting to keep a design that for many symbolizes slavery and oppression, this is a landslide loss for decency.

Certainly, Mississippi is a place no more racist and hateful today than it was before the vote and the support the proposed redesign had from Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, the state’s largest business organization and many prominent white residents is encouraging. In the end, however, the fact that nearly two-thirds of voters saw clinging to their sanitized fantasy of some glorious and chivalrous past that never existed as more important than recognizing the real horror of chains, nooses, discrimination and hatred is profoundly discouraging. At the very least it is incredibly selfish.

And it’s not just Mississippi’s problem. This sad vote comes at a time when one could get the impression that the United States finds striving for racial equality and justice is just too hard, just too much work. The shooting death by police of an unarmed black teen in Cincinnati last week came 10 years after Los Angeles police nearly clubbed Rodney King to death, yet the systematic disparities in the way law-enforcement and the court system treat minorities remain unaddressed. Racial profiling is still rampant, Driving While Black a common crime. The last election exposed shocking disenfranchisement of minority voters, yet the issue has all but fallen off the front page. The incendiary academic David Horowitz suggests that black Americans are better off today because their ancestors were brought here as slaves and he is not heaped with scorn but rewarded with attention.

The trial now under way in Alabama of a white supremacist accused of killing four little girls when he bombed a Birmingham church in 1963 is at once an encouraging reminder of how relentless justice can be and how long it can take when local and state authorities are, at best, uninterested in justice. Justice Department investigations are ongoing in New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles and other cities where racial profiling and other unacceptable police tactics have been uncovered and now one is needed in Cincinnati. Pursuing these investigations diligently will be the first real test for Attorney General John Ashcroft. All the rest is a test for the rest of us.