Bigots drape themselves in the flag, their racism displayed as patriotism. So tight is the crying child’s grip on that flag, the officer, who ultimately rips it away, yanks him off the ground.Īt racist marches, the Stars and Stripes are carried alongside the Stars and Bars of the defeated Confederacy, as if the values imbued in both are the same.
Years later I saw a 1960s photo of a white Mississippi cop, his face knotted in fury, wrestling a flag from the hands of a black child during an anti-police brutality march. Then I saw Stanley Forman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a white man brandishing a flag as a weapon to assault a black man on Boston’s City Hall Plaza, taken during the city’s rancorous busing era. Even if my recitation was more mumbled routine than deeply felt, I never saw a reason to resist facing the flag with my hand within the general proximity of my heart. As a child, I was part of the generation that grew up starting each school day with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Certainly, I wasn’t raised side-eyeing Old Glory.
