There seems to be some confusion here.
Nike isn't attempting to tear down monuments, remove museum exhibits, rewrite history books, or anything like that. Nike is cancelling a limited-edition batch of overpriced running shoes. Deleting a line of shoes that nobody had even heard of 2 weeks ago is certainly not in the same discussion as tearing down statues of John A MacDonald or Robert E Lee.
Certainly the ugly parts of our history need to be remembered and discussed. The heel of someone's shoe is not the right place for that discussion. This is an issue of Nike's branding, not of remembering our history.
A piece of context that has been missing from most of this discussion is WHY Kaepernick objected to the shoes and why Nike changed their mind about releasing them. It's not simply that the Betsy Ross flag was in use during the early days of the US when slavery was still legal. It's that the Betsy Ross flag has been adopted by some far-right and white-power groups. And that is why Nike changed their mind about associating themselves with it.
Why do rednecks, far-right, and white-power groups like the Betsy Ross flag? About the same reason they like the Confederate flag, the Gadsden ("Don't Tread On Me") flag, or in Canada the Red Ensign. They like these old-time flags because they represent a time before the liberals ruined everything with their ideas of civil rights for women and homos and colored-folk.
-k