Roundup: Obama says Americans long been "blind" to pain inflicted on African-Americans by Confederate flag

In his latest speech on race, U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that for too long, Americans had been blind to the pain the racist Confederate battle flag has inflicted on African-Americans.

A historic but deeply divisive symbol, the Confederate battle flag belonged to the pro-slavery side in the Civil War, with some hailing it as a symbol of Southern heritage while others regarded it as a potent symbol of slavery and white supremacy.

"For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate Flag stirred into many of our citizens," Obama said at the funeral service of South Carolina state senator Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine African-American churchgoers killed by white gunman Dylann Roof last week.

Roof, 21, started a shooting spree on June 17 at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina after spending nearly an hour in the Bible study group of his victims.

According to the U.S. TV network CNN, a law enforcement official quoted witnesses as saying that Roof said he was at the church "to shoot black people."

The incident immediately became racially charged as a racist manifesto purportedly written by Roof and photos depicting him holding the Confederate flag surfaced online.

"It's true a flag did not cause these murders," Obama said during Friday's eulogy for Pickney. "But as people from all life now acknowledge... the flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation."

Though removed from the state Capitol dome in 2000, the Confederate battle flag has been flying over a monument for Confederate soldiers on the statehouse grounds.

After the black church massacre last week, the state capitol's American flag was lowered to half-staff. However, the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds remained at full-staff.

"The Confederate flag should be removed, especially from the governmental (compound)," said Sharon Iswalt, a white woman from the northern part of the country. "Because that's a place for all people, and the government should be for all people."

However, for Southerners in the United States, opinions over whether the Confederate flag should be removed from the statehouse grounds were racially divided.

According to a poll conducted by local media The State in November 2014, some 73 percent of whites said the flag should continue to fly, while 61 percent of blacks said it should come down.

Though not mentioning the Confederate flag, Obama said in an interview Monday that racism was still a problem in the United States.

"The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that's still part of our DNA that's passed on," Obama said in an interview with comedian Marc Maron for his popular podcast "WTF."

"We're not cured of it," the U.S. president said. "Societies don't overnight completely erase everything that happened two to 300 years prior."

For Richard Morring, who called himself a Southerner from the area where hate groups were still rampant, Obama's sharp remarks about racism hit the point.

"He's absolutely right... Those people (hate groups) just hold the Confederate flag and they go out (and) march, and try to terrorize people," Morring said. "The idea and belief of white supremacism is just the same." Endi