Reply #15: People who care about civil rights....

[Punkingal]

understand this:

There is a misperception that many of the of Southern states have flown some version of the Confederate flag without interruption since the Civil War. For the most part, the Southern states that raised the Confederate battle flag or incorporated it into their state flag did so in the early part of the 20th century or during the 1950s and 1960s, in a defiant stand against integration. Denmark Groover, the Georgia House floor leader who in 1956 sponsored the legislation to add the Southern Cross into the state flag, freely admitted as much. He maintained that he and many of Georgia's legislators at the time were staunch segregationists who had urged that the Confederate symbol be added to the flag as a protest against federal integration orders.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/confederate2.html

It doesn't matter what it once stood for. What matters is what it stands for now. To not acknowledge that is avoidance and diversion.