NYC Doesn’t Fly Confederate Flags, Still A Shrine To Slaveowners
By Nathan Tempey in Gothamist - In the two weeks since white supremacist Dylann Roof allegedly murdered nine people in a South Carolina church, activists, politicians, and everyday anti-racists have taken up the cause of removing Confederate flags and monuments from the public landscape. The campaign is a noble one—the flag was, after all, created explicitly for Southern white people to start a war to preserve slavery, and Roof posed with it in photos before reportedly trying to incite his own race war—but for some liberal New Yorkers, it has served as a self-congratulatory reminder that the South is a uniquely racist place with a disgusting past that has nothing to do with them.