Amidst the Charleston shooting, the nation is rethinking the morality of owning a Confederate flag. The alleged shooter in the horrid travesty in Charleston, Dylann Roof, had pictures released of him toting the confederate flag.

As a result, Amazon, eBay, Sears and Walmart stopped selling Confederate flag merchandise and South Carolina ordered the flag to be removed from their state capitol.

Did they just realize that the confederate flag is a symbol of racism and hatred towards blacks?

These aren’t good times to reminisce about; these are times in which those who were represented by the confederate flag were in favor of the enslavement of blacks. Truthfully, the flag should have never even been available for purchase in the first place.

We are in the year 2015, we can’t be stuck on the 1850’s. No one can go to a store and purchase an item with confederate money because it is outdated and has no value, the same applies for the confederate flag, it should be outdated and should hold no value.

White supremacy should be outdated too, as well as the belief that one race is superior than the others. Sadly, the racially motivated act of terrorism from Roof on nine African Americans proves that neither of the two have been rightfully outdated.

And we have to take this incident for what it truly is, an act of racism. We can’t put a pair of sunglasses on, walk around with a cane and say we can’t see the racism in the shooting. That simply doesn’t help to solve the problem.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson wrote in a USA Today op-ed, “Let’s call this sickness what it is, so we can get on with the healing,” which is exactly what we should do.

Abolishing the flag will not completely heal the problem, but at least it’s a start. Germany was able to abolish the Nazi swastika, so hopefully we can do the same thing.

The Confederate flag should not be blamed for this fiasco. The problem with the flag is that it symbolizes an unforgettable flaw of our nation’s past.

Slavery is the biggest stain in American history, a time in which blacks were put in bondage, physically and sexually abused, had no sense of freedom and were treated as property rather than people. Gladly we’ve made improvements since then and now we live in a more equal environment.

Our current American flag symbolizes the acceptance of all races and religions as well as economic and educational opportunities for immigrants. Even with the racial tensions in the past year due to police brutality, this nation is in no comparison with the Confederate South.

Getting rid of every flag is an impossible task and there will be strong resistance from those who still believe in the ways of the Confederate South, but it shows that the U.S. is trying to abolish anything that would influence racist beliefs. It is sad that it took the death of nine innocent African Americans in a church to understand the immorality of owning a confederate flag, but it’s better late than never.