You could make the case that 100-150 years ago, the Confederate flag was a symbol of racism or whatever, but even then the argument was kinda flimsy. Mostly it was adopted by poor whites in the South (i.e. the type that didn't own slaves and really weren't really affected positively or negatively by their existence) as a symbol of the sovereignty of the South and a sign of rebellion against Northern tyranny (hence the name "the Rebel flag"). It essentially is just a redesign of the 1812 flag mixed with St. George's and St Patrick's Crosses (since the majority of the white population there was Scotch-Irish/Ulster Scottish) and basically was a call back to the days where Scotland rebelled against England in order to attain it's independence. I'm not going to pretend people haven't used the flag as a racial symbol, but the original meaning of the flag is pretty innocuous and generally benign, as it forms a link between the Old World and the New World by way of political revolution and heritage. It's a lot more complex than "muh racist slave flag" because everyone was racist back then (Lincoln wanted to ship the slaves back to Africa, which was a common sentiment among Northeners, nevermind most slaves alive back then were at the very least 2 or 3 generations separated from the moratorium the US put on shipping slaves from Africa and the sheer logistics of it). Again, it's one of those cases where people are putting modern ethical biases on a subject matter that's time-specific, versus something like pedophilia, murder, adultery, rape or something else that is more universal.
