Before modification by Joel at 26/06/2015 11:32:45 PM
but as usual, i know you can't help yourself when you think a history lesson is in order. but the symbol of the failed fledgling nation-state of the former confederacy was and is a symbol of white America's dominance over black Americans. the flag was used to identify confederate soldiers on the battlefield -- remember, they were the ones who wanted to keep slaves and went to war for that right.
I remember no such thing. Again, CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS DID NOT BLEED AND DIE FOR ANY SLAVERY "RIGHT" MOST OF THEM COULD NEVER EXERCISE ANYWAY. They fought for "contributions Southern Americans made to the history of this nation [which is pretty much ALL OF THEM until that point]" so yes, that is very much the question. "The Dukes of Hazard" was not about glorifying racist cousins, even though they drove around in a car named "The General Lee" with a Confederate Battle Flag painted on its side. I am not calling it high art, but it was not racism, the whole racism and nothing but the racism.
In the 1910s "The Birth of a Nation" showed Klansmen marching down the street too ashamed to bare their faces but proudly bearing the Stars and Stripes: Does that make IT a "racist symbol"? Again, US racisms SIGNATURE ELEMENT is not any flag, but a burning cross: I guess that means I married a racist Klanswoman, because she not only wears that "racist symbol" around her neck, but DAILY! 
Seriously, you made me agree with trollster here: Anyone who watches "Gone with the Wind" and gets Clark Gable is such a racist SOB does NOT get it.
Racists are human filth, and know it (justified insecurity is usually much of why they are racists) so latch on to any and every respected symbol they can find to "justify" their contemptibility: That does not mean they competely and irredeemably corrupt all those previously respected symbols the moment they touch them, and certainly not that they should be ALLOWED to do so.