Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized Anyway I now view all unfamiliar flags much more suspiciously, current events, Including what turned out to be the actual state flag of Texas, no rebloggin 1 Comment

A few years ago I part-owned a shirt with a Confederate flag on it. Well, sort of, it was one of those really cheap shirts you see in pop-up stores where the design on it is just like a bunch of random stock patterns and words? It was kinda like this I think except well, obviously a cheap knock-off of that kind of t-shirt. And a couple of Confederate flags, it turned out, were buried in the design, pretty small but still visible. I used to wear that shirt to bed every now and again because it came down to my knees, like a nightie.

I’m British and high school didn’t really teach any American history beyond the Cold War basics. I had no idea what that flag actually meant, exactly how bad it was. I knew it was an American thing, obviously. I thought it was the state flag of Texas, because I had vague recollections that The Dukes of Hazzard was associated with it and wasn’t that set in Texas? (Actually it was not.) I thought the flag had been probably co-opted by racists a lot during its history, I had a suspicion about that (in the same way the EDL co-opt the English flag, or used to) based on vague snippets I knew of Texas and its stereotypes, but the idea that it was racist in and of itself, that that was more or less its entire point, that never dawned on me.

…..Until it did, obviously. So we packed up the shirt in a bin bag and I guess it either went to the tip or a recycling place or something.

Anyway I suppose the moral of the story is that if something turns out to be racist, no matter how useful or vaguely aesthetically pleasing it is, you should get rid of it.