There really should be no reason for anyone to fly the Confederate flag. The country it represents no longer exists and lost a war to the United States of America. Any American proud of this flag is evidently proud of treason against the country they currently live. The Confederate flag should not be confused with an American flag at all, as it is the flag of the Confederate States, not the United States of America.

The Confederate flag is comparable to the Nazi Swastika: both are symbols that stood for oppression, bigotry, and crimes against humanity, just to name a few. In Germany, the only Nazi imagery you’ll find is in exhibits devoted to understanding the horror of the period. The same should be done with any Confederate imagery in America. The Nazi regime, ans WWII, ended only 75 years ago and Germany and most of Europe have already dealt with criminalizing and banning the imagery associated with the horrible acts committed by the Nazis. Hell, the Swastika was banned right after the war ended. It has been 150 some years since the Civil War and some loser Americans still hold dear their heritage of racism, slavery, treason, and segregation. Those four things not only have no in place America (or the world for that matter), but are in direct conflict with the constitution. The Confederate flag violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment to the Constitution, because intentional state sponsorship of it burdens all Americans – including insular and discrete minorities – with race based conduct and the race-based pro slavery symbol has no place in the state’s ordinary political processes. This is to say that no government building, entity, or thing may display anything having to do with Confederate Imagery.

Many of the critics of Kaepernick and the many other players who joined him in kneeling cite his act as being disrespectful to the US military. These people seem to conveniently forget two things: 1. the men and women in the military fight to secure American's freedom, and Kaepernick is exercising his freedom to free speech and peacefully protest and 2. black people have also been a part of the military and have (surprise!) been treated poorly by the military. The American flag does not mean the same thing for all people, nor does it represent the same thing for all who served in the military. The US military was segregated until 1948, and black individuals who served in the military, fighting in WWI and WWII, fought for American rights which they wouldn’t have upon coming home. It was fairly common for southern postal workers to deliberately withhold the registration cards of eligible black men and have them arrested for being draft dodgers. White men refused to salute black officers and black officers were often barred from the officer’s clubs and quarters. Because many Southern civilians protested having blacks from other states inhabit nearby training camps, the War Department stipulated that no more than one-fourth of the trainees in any Army camp in the U.S. could be African American. Additionally, Blacks could not serve in the Marines, and could only serve limited and menial positions in the Navy and the Coast Guard during WWI. Even during WWI, while black individuals were demonstrating their loyalty to the nation as soldiers, their communities were still massacred and burnt to the ground by whites. After the war, and although black Americans had shown their loyalty and patriotism for their country, their expectations for equal job opportunities and wages were met with some 25 race riots, all started by whites. These riots all happened during the Summer of 1919, the Red Summer. Despite serving in the military and fighting for America, white America still was so opposed to black people getting equal treatment that they rioted and turned to violence.

Upon returning from World War II, white soldiers were treated better and got a lot more benefits than black soldiers. The GI Bill offered three major benefits: money for education and training, loan guarantees for homes, farms, or businesses, and unemployment pay. About half - 51% -of the WWII veterans received a college education, the Veterans Administration would back a total of $4.3 million in loans and approved close to a third of all home loans, and unemployment provisions in the bill that provided a $20 weekly check for up to one year. The GI Bill would help achieve a pot-war economic boom and was in part responsible for the economic success of America in the 1950s and while it did make the growing middle class more diverse, black veterans were unable to take advantage of all the bill had to offer thanks to this line which can be found on page 289 of this transcript:

"No department, agency, or officer of the United States, in carrying out the provisions of this part, shall exercise any supervision or control, whatsoever, over any State educational agency, or State apprenticeship agency, or any educational or training institution."

This little phrase is thanks to Mississippi representative John Rankin, a white supremacist who opposed legislation to improve civil rights and was quite racist, While it doesn't explicitly state that black veterans could be discriminated against or anything like that, it meant that the benefits would be filtered through state agencies, many of which were still governed by the Jim Crow laws in the south. Most colleges in the south at this time barred black people from attending (remember, it wasn't until the mid 1960s that schools were desegregated and the GI Bill expired in 1956). desegregation didn't happen on a mass scale until . Thus, 95% of black veterans could only attend historically black colleges that were underfunded by the state and overwhelmed by the influx of veterans. Schools like the Tuskegee Institute and Alcorn State lacked government investment in their infrastructure and simply could not accommodate an influx of so many students, whereas well-funded white institutions were more equipped to take in students. In many parts of the U.S., this allowed Veterans Administration counselors to push black veterans into vocational and trade schools instead of academic institutions, which resulted in 86% of the skilled, professional, and semiskilled jobs going to white veterans while 92% percent of the nonskilled and service positions went to black vets. So essentially the GI Bill gave white veterans an opportunity to get a good education where they could go on to lucrative jobs but gave black veterans an unfulfilled promise and opportunity, contributing to the wage gap. Pretty much the same story with home loans, as the practice of redlining made it almost impossible for minorities like black people to get a home loan. Furthermore, the realtors code of ethics stated that "A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood," meaning that realtors could openly discriminate against black people. Apparently that line was not fully repealed until 1974. This article covers the discrimination in slightly more detail and provides this example (zoom in on number 16) as evidence of how blatant the discrimination was and you can read more about that specific case here. The History Channel cities an article published by the American Political Science Association which identifies that in Mississippi which found that in 1947 only 2 of the more than 3,200 VA-guaranteed home loans in 13 Mississippi cities went to Black borrowers. They also identify that In New York and the northern New Jersey suburbs, fewer than 100 of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI bill supported home purchases by non-whites, as per a book. It doesn't look like black veterans were deprived of that $20 unemployment check though, so that's good. While the GI Bill was drafted as a race-neutral bill and was one of the more progressive acts of the time, it sadly still had a negative effect on the black community. Two significant mechanisms for building wealth are education and home ownership and it is in these two areas that Congress, and by extension all of America, went out of its way with the GI Bill to build up white veterans and grow a rising middle class. At the same time the bill’s implementation showed black Americans that we did not in fact believe that all men or women, or all veterans, were created equal. The bill ultimately exacerbated educational differences and the wealth gap between white and black Americans. While it had the best intentions, racism just got in the way.