I was feeling uncomfortable as I drove along the street in an unfamiliar gated community searching for the house where a candidate meet-and-greet was to be held. As I looked for the correct number, I was tempted to pass over the number of the house with the huge American flag out front. However, when I checked out the number, I found it was the house to which I had sent my RSVP to meet the candidates.
Instinctively we know that the Confederate flag is a symbol of hate, racism, and discrimination. My reaction to the national flag in front of the house I was about to enter brought home to me the ways in which the symbolism of the American flag has in many ways been appropriated by people who want to roll back progress, returning the nation to a time when the majority ruled absolutely, and anyone the majority categorized as “other” was inferior and needed to be weeded out, held down, and pushed back.
But the flag does not belong to any one group. It is the flag of an increasingly diverse nation. I want to think of it as a symbol of the nation’s evolving aspirations toward “liberty and justice for all.”
It’s such a pity that good people have allowed the national flag to be used to strike fear into the hearts of people when they see it flying from the back of a pickup truck or on a flagpole in the front yard of a house. We should not be threatened or intimidated by the nation’s flag. We should reclaim it and fly it as our right to freedom, equity, justice, inclusion, and opportunity.
Gwen Dungy 