I'm getting so damn tired of this PC crap and it really has got to stop. Although I understand, and agree with the desire to show, symbolically, the diversity of the city and of the victims, rewriting an actual historical event is just wrong.
Design a statue that has everything to do with the Sept 11th atrocity but doesn't recreate an image as familiar as the picture of the raising of the ensign over the rubble.
For instance they can design a sculpture of 3 firemen, or 2 firemen and a cop racing up the WTC stairwells loaded down with their gear. Hell, if you really, really, really need to use the image of the flag being raised, use faceless figures, depicting NO race other than the human.
Their are thousands of ideas that can be used for a memorial sculpture without revising history. This is just an example of intellectual laziness on the behalf of the people designing the memorial.