In the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a heavily researched post that should, hopefully, settle the dispute. He pointed to numerous writings from during and before the Civil War era — including some from Confederate leaders — that made it clear Southern states were seceding because they feared the North would take away their ability to enslave black people. Just read South Carolina’s justification when it became the first state to secede after Abraham Lincoln’s election:

Speaking less than a week after nine black people were murdered at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and just a few miles from Ferguson, where unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in August, Clinton applauded South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and other Republicans who said Monday that the flag should be removed from the state Capitol grounds.

Much has been made about whether the Confederate flag is racist in the days after the mass shooting of the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Even as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called to remove the flag from the state Capitol’s grounds, she gave credence to the idea that the Confederate flag is not a symbol of white supremacy and instead is a way to honor fallen soldiers and Southern heritage.

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart on Monday called out Fox News on its hypocritical response to the mass shooting of a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

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In 2004, the Survey Research Laboratory at Georgia State University surveyed 522 white Georgia residents about a version of the Georgia state flag that included the Confederate battle flag. (This was the official Georgia state flag until 2001; in 2004, there was a referendum in which Georgia voters could vote for it to be reinstated.) And they found Confederate flag supporters didn’t know much about the actual Confederacy.

There was an incongruous message wrapped inside South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call for the Confederate flag to be removed from the Capitol grounds in Columbia: states’ rights.

Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that it will take much more than pulling down the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina to heal America’s racial divisions.

The Confederate flag’s demise came after weeks of tense debate. After a white man shot and killed nine people at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last month, state lawmakers were criticized for allowing the Confederate flag — a symbol of white supremacy — to fly at the state Capitol. Supporters of the flag claimed it was about celebrating the South’s heritage, but lawmakers ultimately agreed it was too offensive of a symbol to African Americans to remain on Capitol grounds — and took it down.

Southern states are abandoning the Confederate flag — including on their license plates. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe was the first to say he wanted a redesign of the Sons of Confederate Veterans plate, which features the battle flag. Now governors in four other states — Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Tennessee — have followed.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Monday that it was time South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its state capitol grounds, in the aftermath of a shooting that killed nine people at a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Moving the flag requires a two-thirds vote from the state legislature. And even then, the Confederate flag won’t lose its official position in the South entirely. Two states — Georgia and Mississippi — still incorporate the battle flag or other symbols of the Confederacy into their own state flags.

As momentum against Confederate flags on statehouse grounds and on license plates picks up steam, conservative pundit and entrepreneur Bill Kristol wonders exactly how far the slippery slope will go:

In one sense, it’s taken a long time to get to this point: The Civil War ended 150 years ago. But it can also seem like things have happened fast since Haley’s announcement Monday. The NAACP and other groups have fought for decades to get the Confederate flags down. And suddenly, politicians are changing their minds in a matter of minutes.

This statement, from South Carolina Republican state Senator Paul Thurmond, is the New York Times’s quotation of the day for Wednesday:

Throughout history, the Confederate flag has been repeatedly used as a symbol to oppress black people. It was flown by Southern armies during the Civil War as they fought to keep slavery. And it was later brought back in the 1960s, as Vox’s Libby Nelson explained, to intimidate civil rights advocates and defend segregation.

That Republicans are more favorably disposed toward the Confederate flag than Democrats would come as a surprise to Abraham Lincoln, though not to anyone paying attention to the past two generations’ worth of racial politics. But a fascinating Gallup poll shows that Republicans are actually becoming increasingly enamored of the flag over time:

The Confederacy used several flags during the Civil War. The best-known is the battle flag, which is what South Carolina was flying on its statehouse grounds. Georgia incorporated the battle flag into its official state flag in 1956, as the state legislature was embracing “massive resistance” to the Brown v. Board of Education school integration decision:

Supporters of displaying the Confederate battle flag in public places like South Carolina’s statehouse often argue that it’s about “heritage, not hate.” But as political scientists Spencer Piston and Logan Strother write for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, there is actual data measuring how Confederate flag supporters and opponents each feel about the South and its history. And, frankly, it doesn’t look good for the “heritage, not hate” argument.

The Confederate flag came down at South Carolina’s Capitol grounds on Friday after state lawmakers approved a law that will move it to a museum. And the crowd was celebratory — chanting “USA, USA, USA” and singing “na na na na hey hey hey goodbye” as the flag fell.

The news network criticized President Barack Obama and others for “taking advantage” of the tragic shooting to advance a narrative regarding gun violence and gun control in the US. “It’s almost like a sickness — like, ‘Oh, tragedy happens. Let’s see how we can advance this narrative,’” Fox News anchor Sean Hannity said.

There’s been a lot of debate about whether the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism or one of heritage. But at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates demonstrates that this debate is a false choice: The flag could very easily be a symbol of both — because America’s heritage is, at least in part, systemic racism.

This is true both in terms of overall sentiments and on the specific question of whether state governments should officially display the flag:

South Carolina began flying the Confederate battle flag in 1962, one of several southern states that re-embraced it as a sign of resistance to the Civil Rights movement.

Since last week’s shooting in Charleston, there’s been increased debate about whether South Carolina should take down the Confederate battle flag flying over its state Capitol grounds. Here’s what Republican presidential hopefuls (and Mitt Romney) said about the issue — and whether their positions changed later on:

“The events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way,” Haley said. In the aftermath of a shooting apparently motivated by white supremacy, even as South Carolina’s state flag and the American flag were lowered to half-staff, the Confederate flag continued to fly.

Supporters of the Confederate flag claim it’s flown to honor the dead who fought in the Civil War and pay tribute to the South’s heritage. The problem is this heritage is mired in racism — as demonstrated by states’ justifications for seceding at the start of the Civil War.

But it’s also because the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling on Friday that states could reject license plate designs that they deem offensive. In an unusual alignment, Justice Clarence Thomas joined with the court’s liberal wing to form the majority. Thomas didn’t write the opinion, so it’s hard to say what his legal reasoning was, but he’s forcefully opposed symbols of white supremacy from the bench before.

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“The horrible attack in South Carolina seems to have caused a national reexamination of some of the more visible Southern symbols honoring that time that they fought, uh … us,” Stewart said. “It’s actually part of our new segment: ‘Huh, I guess it is pretty fucking weird that we fly a flag in honor of a pro-slavery secessionist army.’”

What’s great about this tweet is that while obviously there’s more to “the Left’s” agenda than this (pre-K, climate change, income inequality, blah blah blah), Kristol isn’t actually wrong about its positions. Most people on the American left really do think that fighting for the Confederacy — a country founded for the purpose of maintaining slavery — was morally wrong and unworthy of recognition. The United States has historically been very unusual in its official commemoration of the leaders of a failed rebellion against the government, and the story behind that commemoration is one of a rather sordid bargain in which white Americans from the North and the South agreed to sweep the interests of black Americans under the rug. The stability of that “compromise” is now coming undone, and rightly so.

The statement is, of course, newsworthy not because any of the information about the link between the Confederate battle flag, racism, and slavery is news (it’s not, at all).

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Bree Newsome, an organizer and activist from Charlotte, North Carolina, took down South Carolina’s Confederate flag this morning by climbing up the 30-foot flagpole on statehouse grounds.

“We come against … hatred, oppression, and violence. I come against you in the name of God,” Newsome shouted as she climbed the flagpole. “This flag comes down today.”

Gov. Nikki Haley called for South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of its statehouse in the wake of a shooting apparently motivated by white supremacy that killed nine people in Charleston. Now other political leaders are following in her footsteps, trying to get rid of the most visible, official-seeming Confederate symbols in their states.

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For about 80 years after the end of the Civil War, the flag was mostly used to honor the dead and commemorate battles. As the narrative of the Civil War changed to focus on the heroism of soldiers on both sides, and substituted “states’ rights” for slavery as the cause of the conflict, celebrating the Confederate flag was seen as innocuous — a crux of the “heritage, not hate” argument.