When we moved from New Jersey to North Carolina in 2012, my wife and I knew our family of four was in for a cultural shock. Since we both were raised in Arkansas, we were no strangers to the South. I grew up during the last gasps of Jim Crow; my wife was raised in a town where Blacks and whites lived on opposite sides of the railroad tracks.
Both of our children were born in Hoboken, New Jersey, however. Their early years were spent playing in a neighborhood filled with children from around the world. Before our move, neither of them had ever seen a Confederate flag, let alone a civilian strolling around in public with a Glock strapped to their belt. Suffice it to say that we knew their lives were about to change significantly.
We eventually settled in an island community a stone’s throw from the ocean. The quality of life more than makes up for the area’s homogeneity. If not for an occasional hurricane, where we live is like living in paradise. Paradise, that is, except for all the flags.
vex·i·pho·bi·a — n: An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to flags.
Fear of flying (flags)
A few months ago, we ran into some friends who, like many of our neighbors, moved to the island from New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut. Since we lived in the area for over a decade, it’s always fun to exchange stories from back in the day.
The conversation eventually drifted to the topic of September 11th. Although the attacks on the Twin Towers were more than two decades ago, everyone’s memories were still vivid. For a fleeting moment, the country was united. I’ve never felt as patriotic as I did after the 9/11 attacks.
Despite a controversial election less than a year earlier, partisanship fell by the wayside. Neither of us voted for George W. Bush, but in the aftermath of the catastrophe, both of us were behind him.
One of the most enduring images I recall from those days is that of the American flag. In our Weehawken, New Jersey neighborhood, the Stars and Stripes were omnipresent. My wife was learning to use her new camera, and she took hundreds of photographs of American flags in the weeks after September 11th.
In our neighborhood, an American flag flew outside every home and apartment balcony. Every car, it seemed, had a tiny U.S. flag flying from one of its windows. Displaying our red, white, and blue flag was emblematic of our patriotism, a show of solidarity. We were all on the same team.
What we didn’t tell our friends that night was that we no longer flew the flag outside our home. Our decision was not due to a lack of patriotism. It is because most of the flags we see these days make it abundantly clear that all of us are no longer on the same team.
Unlike my halcyon recollection of the days following 9/11, the sight of an American flag displayed rings differently. The pride we felt after that September day in 2001 has been replaced with an uneasy feeling of uncertainty and suspicion, “flagaphobia,” if you will. Because in my neck of the woods, Old Glory rarely flies alone.
As I move about my adopted hometown the flags, and the messages they deliver, are impossible to ignore. I notice a local sports bar with “Blue Lives Matter” and “Red Lives Matter” flags flanking the entrance. A few miles later, a gift shop flies the Betsy Ross flag. I make a mental note never to patronize these businesses.
Whether paired with Betsy Ross flags, the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, the “Blue Lives Matter flags,” the Confederate flag, the Trump flag — or all the above — the message is clear. Their flyers mean to “take our country back.” It doesn’t take a genius to understand who they believe has dispossessed them of what is rightfully theirs.
Politics and pickleball
Not long ago, we started playing pickleball with another couple on the island. When we arrived for our match, I noticed the husband’s t-shirt bore the message, “I identify as non-Bidenary,” a not-so-subtle jab at both the queer community and President Joe Biden.
We’ve always known that our pickleball friends are politically conservative, but we don’t consider them radical or extreme. Still, I wasn’t surprised. Our family’s progressive political views are in short supply on the island.
When the Ku Klux Klan tried to recruit new followers in upstate New York in 2018, its fliers featured a Klansman flanked by the Confederate flag and the Betsy Ross flag.
As we warmed up, I gestured to his shirt and said jokingly, “We should leave politics out of pickleball.” To which, he quipped, “I should’ve worn the one with the Betsy Ross flag.” For the unfamiliar, he was referring to Nike’s 2019 decision — at the behest of Colin Kaepernick — to halt its release of a shoe featuring the Betsy Ross flag.
While anything Kaepernick-related is culture war gold, here’s the thing: the reason the blackballed former quarterback advised Nike against marketing the Betsy Ross flag is that, much like the once-innocuous Pepe the Frog, that flag has been co-opted by a variety of far-right ideologies, as pointed out in a 2019 New York Times article on Nike’s decision.
Did my pickleball partner know how extremists use the Betsy Ross flag? Maybe he missed the insurrectionists waving Betsy Ross flags when they ransacked the Capitol, too. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but who can say? Maybe he agrees with their cause. Sadly, in the culture wars, racism — or insurrection for that matter — is no longer a dealbreaker.
That’s the problem with flags. You don’t always know what one means to the person waving it. As strange as it seems, I long for the days when the only flag that worried me was the banner of the Confederacy.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Marlon Weems' work on Medium.