It does seem a legitimate debate question: to what degree can white supremacists usurp the original meaning of the Ross flag, and should we credit that usurping in any way? I can see both sides of the debate here. With some symbols, the situation is more clear-cut: no one frets about what the swastika meant to early Aryan peoples, as a symbol of health, luck, and prosperity. It was permanently and irrevocably stained when the Nazis co-opted the ancient symbol. With the Ross flag, it's less clear to me that the stain Kaepernick has perceived is irrevocable. I don't think ignoring this newer attempt to co-opt a classic symbol of independence and unity makes someone a racist.
I am really not sure, myself, that I want to let the extremist groups rule our perceptions.
You ever think just once to pay attention when black people say, “Whoa?”
We keep seeing this same movie and we know how it ends.
Remember when you were a kid snd the Gadsden Flag was damn cool? A symbol of Revolutionary America? After the mainstreaming of above ground racism through the TEA Party that flag tells the world who you are. I see that on a bumper of a pristine F150 parked on Pennsylvania Ave SE there maybe someone in We The Pizza might... that flag is gone.
But we had this same debate...
Before that no one gave a shit about the General Lee because the show was stupid and funny but long before that folks in the South knew exactly what the flag represented at Ole Miss and everywhere else.
We debated loud and long about that flag, right? Is there any debate now?
The Right is conflating patriotism with racism.