Just a few days in the past, I finished by CVS to purchase low-cost U.S. flag gear: a scarf with two small flags glued to it, LED flag-themed glasses and a hat in crimson, white and blue. I needed to see if I might rediscover my former enthusiasm for the flag.
Lengthy earlier than I used to be known as “anti-American” (by devotees of the white demagogue), you would say I used to be a type of patriot. The flag impressed in me a way of pleasure.
However the flag has modified that means for many people. On the drugstore, I grabbed the patriotic objects shortly and used self-checkout, hoping no person would see. Although Donald Trump misplaced reelection almost two years in the past, the advertising and marketing grasp left a mark on the flag. Many Latinos and different individuals he scapegoated nonetheless recoil upon seeing it. It has change into a stand-in for the GOP’s white nationalist agenda.
Opinion Columnist
Jean Guerrero
Jean Guerrero is the writer, most just lately, of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.”
The hopeful sense in November of 2020 that we’d reclaimed the flag has died because the GOP offers blow after blow to hard-won equal rights, together with ladies’s proper to bodily autonomy. The euphoria of a spontaneous dance social gathering I joined at a Los Feliz fuel station on Nov. 7, 2020 — as Angelenos twerked with abandon amid U.S. flags — is lengthy gone.
How can we rejoice Independence Day, with its flags and belligerent shows of patriotism, when so many in our communities really feel terrorized by such rituals? I dumped the flag merchandise on my couch and squinted. The stuff seemed clownish and sinister, just like the authoritarian himself. I picked up the LED flag glasses and put them on. Stepped in entrance of the mirror. Disturbed, I took them off.
How had Trump come to reside inside this image I as soon as believed represented me?
After I was 7 or 8, my mother purchased me a T-shirt patterned just like the flag. I wore it proudly, together with on a go to to New York Metropolis once I posed on Ellis Island, with the Twin Towers within the background. The Statue of Liberty was spectacular, calling outcasts to our shores. My mom, who paid for medical faculty in Puerto Rico by enlisting within the Nationwide Well being Service Corps, informed me we lived within the “land of alternative.”
Just a few years later, I watched the towers fall on TV from dwelling in San Diego. President George W. Bush mentioned we have been attacked as a result of “we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and alternative on the planet.” My mom purchased U.S. flags for our home. I joined a big human flag formation at Qualcomm Stadium. I painted flags on my face and waved patriotic pompoms.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the fiction started to fray. I dreamed of turning into a journalist; early experiments in it taught me skepticism. Furthermore, I’d at all times sensed a battle on the coronary heart of my mom’s patriotism. The place she cited a land of alternative for all, I noticed a Sisyphean topography for her.
In Greek legend, Sisyphus is doomed to roll a boulder up a mountain for eternity. My single mom appeared to be in an limitless wrestle for me and my sister. Whereas elevating us, she was additionally taking good care of her aged dad and mom who had moved in with us from Puerto Rico. And he or she had developed a painful auto-immune dysfunction commonest amongst ladies of shade. Her license plate learn: “CLIMING.”
The land of alternative had a sinister aspect. Some individuals have been condemned to climb without end.
Quickly I discovered Bush was utilizing 9/11 as a pretext for struggle towards harmless Muslims. I examine Mexicans dying at our militarized border. Later, as a reporter, I noticed the our bodies. I noticed the U.S. weapons displacing individuals in Latin America.
Then a Mexican-hating, Muslim-barring bully turned president and raised a mob to assault the Capitol after he misplaced 4 years later. His Supreme Courtroom paved a path to Gilead.
In spite of everything these horrors, how might the flag imply the identical because it had earlier than?
After I requested Myriam Gurba, a Lengthy Seashore activist and writer of the approaching essay assortment “Creep,” whether or not she thought the flag was redeemable, she mentioned: “Some issues must be burned.” I discovered myself agreeing together with her.
U.S. protesters have a lengthy custom of burning the flag to demand change. It’s a type of protected speech. However I personally couldn’t try this. The flag has been on the middle of so many brave scenes in our historical past, not solely shameful ones.
Later, whereas driving to see buddies, I noticed the small U.S. flags splayed on my automobile flooring. They seemed pitiful – like trashed, once-treasured mementos. The sight triggered a reflexive protectiveness.
I didn’t need to quit on the flag. Nonetheless, I had a tough time seeing previous the mogul’s mark. I tossed my flag merchandise in my automobile, wanting it out of my place however uncertain what to do with it.
I pulled up photographs of the 2006 immigrant rights marches, when tons of of 1000's of People, principally Latinos, demonstrated in additional than 140 cities. The U.S. flag was all over the place.
It should have been nightmarish to the nativists studying Samuel Huntington’s mad ravings about Latinos as a menace U.S. id: a sea of U.S. flags amongst Latinos. (The dreaded reconquista, achieved!)
“It was a political maneuver and really strategic,” mentioned Tomás Jiménez, a professor of sociology at Stanford College who research American and racial identities. “You noticed Latinos and immigrants on the whole claiming it as a logo for his or her lives.”
Spanish-language radio host Eddie “El Piolin” Sotelo inspired listeners to hold U.S. flags. “We needed them to indicate that we love this nation,” Sotelo informed the Los Angeles Occasions. “Bringing the U.S. flag, that was vital.”
Within the flag-studded sea, Latinos noticed a rustic that included them. The 2008 elections noticed historic Latino voter turnout. Repurposed, the flag had a placing energy: strengthening democracy.
“Mythology is extra helpful as a political device than rationality,” the British Indian author Rana Dasgupta informed me. In these marches, pro-immigrant forces tapped into a robust delusion of American id. Nevertheless, Dasgupta argues, the political proper these days reveals the better mastery of delusion, fueling nationalism.
Democrats have shied away from boldly pro-immigrant insurance policies and rhetoric. They’re the social gathering of moderation, mythology’s kiss of dying. However we’re a nation of immigrants. We will reimagine how inclusive a flag could be.
A Pew Analysis Middle survey final yr discovered that views on nationwide id right here and in Western Europe are rising extra inclusive regardless of xenophobic politics. As individuals meet extra foreigners, their worry abates. And most People consider openness to the stranger “is crucial to who we're.”
The U.S. flag shouldn't belong to the fascists, who fail to understand our energy. The flag ought to belong to the individuals carrying the boulder of this nation on their backs.
They’ve been giving and giving and giving. They've each proper to take again the flag.
Post a Comment