South Carolina's dogged persistence in holding onto the Confederate Flag has long been a point of contention and a pet cause of the NAACP. At the organization's convention last week, leaders announced plans to launch a renewed effort to get South Carolina officials, who moved the flag from its perch atop the state house to a memorial for Confederate soldiers in 2000, to remove the flag entirely.

Cord Jefferson (who is undergoing kidney transplant surgery as we speak — wish him luck!), asked readers last week if the flag is about heritage or hate — I say that heritage and hate aren't necessarily mutually exclusive in this particular case. The Confederate Flag is a symbol of the South's history, of which virulent racism and violence are part and parcel. The people who insist on waving it proudly are exhibiting, at best, an unabashed insensitivity to the painful memories and history that the flag represents for so many people, and, at worst, the ugly racism handed down to Southerners from their forefathers. There are a lot of people who disagree with me on this in South Carolina. Then again, there are a lot of people who agree with me. Incidentally, none of them seem to care too much about the NAACP's latest anti-flag efforts. Why?

Some lawmakers who engineered the move to the current spot say they're satisfied. Some say the banner, passed by 28,000 drivers each day, has faded into the background. And even those who aren't pleased say there's neither the political will nor the public outcry to make another switch.

"It will take the next generation of lawmakers to resolve the issue," says state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a black Democrat from Orangeburg.

State Sen. Robert Ford, who co-wrote legislation to remove the flag from the statehouse, says that the flag is now "minding its business" at the appropriate site of the Confederate Memorial and that the NAACP should set its sights on Georgia and Mississippi, whose state flags incorporate Confederate symbols. Or maybe the NAACP should be setting its sight on something else entirely. As much as I despise that flag, there are many more pressing issues facing the black community. I've always felt that the Confederate flag is sort of like an Obama '08 or pro-life or Grateful Dead bumper sticker. At the very least, it lets you know a little bit about where people stand. [MSNBC]