Via HuffPo:

Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that the idea that Americans should honor racism with the Confederate flag is similar to a disease in people’s minds.

“I think in many people’s minds the Confederate battle flag is not only a memorial to our ancestors, which is perfectly OK, but also a symbol of white superiority and an inclination for people to believe that even slavery would’ve been OK,” Carter said on HuffPost Live .

“I think that’s a minority [of people], but it’s still like a cancer in many people’s minds that racial distinction should be honored in law and symbolism.”

South Carolina lawmakers voted Monday to remove the Confederate battle flag that flies at the state capitol in Columbia, after weeks of debate following last month’s massacre that left nine people dead at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.