Confederate flag must be confined to the past

With calls last week for Cork GAA fans to stop displaying Confederate flags at matches, American author Barbara Kingsolver says it’s time to let the flag go in her homeland too

My little town is proud to have reared citizens such as Carolee, an honour student and star athlete who offers a helping hand to anyone she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a ponytail and a delicate tattoo on her wrist. It’s the Confederate battle flag.

That flag has come crashing into the global conversation after an avowed white supremacist massacred nine parishioners in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. He tore up hearts and families, left a state without its senator and a nation bereft. His was a crime so senseless leaves us grappling for something we can blame, or fix.