The lasting effect of Dylann Roof’s terrorist attack on nine African American women and men at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church now looks likely to be the removal of the Confederate flag from public display. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has called on the state legislature to strike the flag from the state’s capitol grounds. Elected leaders elsewhere, as well as major corporations, have all begun to “divest” themselves of symbols of the Confederacy, a century and a half after the Civil War ended.

Their actions are merely diversions. They are addressing the least important cause of Roof’s racist murder spree. Focusing on flags and monuments draws our attention from the hard work that is required to reduce the burden of racism in American society. And the public’s attention span is so very short that I wonder how many people will care after the flag frenzy passes and the nine funerals are over.

The #TakeItDown movement is dizzyingly seductive and grows in ever-increasing intensity, blotting out all other concerns about the Charleston shootings. The South Carolina legislature, which made itself the sole authority on flying the flag after protests in the 1990s, is moving to evict it from its place of honor. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley ordered the removal of the battle flag and three other Confederate symbols from his state’s capitol grounds in Montgomery. The symbolic power of taking the flag down in Montgomery is undeniable: It was the first capital of the Confederate States of America, and it was there that southerners approved the Constitution of the Confederate States, with its prohibition against the passage of any law “denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves,” and other protections for slavery.