I've never seen the Confederate flag imply racism. Its more about pride than anything, and I think we all have the right to express our pride. I'm not saying that southerners are prideful for being in a part of the country that used to have slavery, and tried to seceded from the united states, but if you ever get the chance to visit the southern part, you'll take notice of how vastly different they are from the north. Its like a different culture down there.
And in order to show their pride of being unique and different, they took a piece of their history with them, in this case the flag, which unfortunately is now being subject to ridicule for promoting racism and hatred... Which I don't believe it does. The Egyptians have kept their pyramids around, and do we hear or see anything about racism and hatred coming from them? Europeans have kept their concentration camps, same goes for them, anything hateful or racist coming from over there? Which is the main point I'm expressing, something only becomes a problem, when people bring attention to it. The flag wasn't a problem for 200 years until now. If it was such a racist and hateful symbol, it would have been removed already, wouldn't it? I mean fuck, even during the civil rights protests during the 1960s when blacks paraded around demanding liberties and rights, just as whites have them, did they ever bring attention to the flag? Nope... and most of those civil rights protests happened in the south... irony.
Some homosexuals like to use the rainbow flag as a way of expressing their pride, I don't openly express my pride of being gay, I have expressed my pride of being able to marry another man though. But that's a bit different. We worked our asses off for decades for this to happen and it finally did. Which I'm prideful for.
There's a difference between having an opinion and promoting that opinion and then, when you promote the opinion there is a difference between promoting it in a peaceful way, and promoting it in a hostile way and a lot of what I've seen so far is hostility regarding this particular flag.
I don't particularly care to see the flag waved in my face either, but I don't have an issue with it. If us homosexuals can wave our rainbow flag, I say the south should be able to wave theirs!
And I'm not saying everyone who is complaining is trying to make money off their complaints, but people do that.