"To replace the Confederate flag with a Pride flag won't fix American racism"

"The Pride flag, created in 1978 by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker, is today a profound international symbol for LGBT visibility and rights. Harvey Milk, the assassinated gay civil rights leader, strongly supported the idea of a flag to make the LGBT rights cause “more visible”. Baker said: “A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility, or saying, ‘This is who I am!’”And, though it’s worth celebrating that the United States became the 20th country to legalize gay marriage – and worth waving that flag on its own – the right for same-sex couples to marry is not freedom for African Americans from the oppression symbolized by the Confederate flag. To suggest otherwise is to pit two important, but very different, struggles for equality against one another in the cheapest way...
And, as my colleague Dr Timothy P McCarthy told me, “[The flags] represent different traditions of protest – the former a reactionary one, the latter a progressive.” To put these flags in a line of succession is to disrespect the continuing impact on black Americans of the widespread display of the Confederate flag, and to fundamentally misunderstand the depths of the oppression still faced by LGBT people – and black LGBT people – even with the right to marry now enshrined in law."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/29/confederate-flag-pride-flag-fix-racism

mmmmm
"we’re a bit quick to replace a difficult reckoning with an enthusiastic celebration"

Ya - why do we have one understanding of fights against prejudice like they are the same process? Why do we have compartments (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc...) and then draw precise parallels across them? Why were we taught them in this way?