There were four flags in the news this week.
Three were involved in a tragedy. In the days following Dylann Roof's alleged killing of nine congregants in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, a predictable few commentators tried to complicate or confuse what the event really was: an act of race-based terrorism. Some tried to make the killing about mental illness; others tried to suggest it wasn't an attack on blacks but on Christians. Two flags confounded these falsehoods.
They were patches stitched onto a jacket Roof wore in a photograph that circulated widely after the attack. One was the flag of Rhodesia, as modern-day Zimbabwe was known during a time of white rule. The other was of apartheid-era South Africa. These are not familiar symbols to most Americans, but they're clear in their meaning. They stand for violent white supremacy.
The third flag involved in the Charleston tragedy is the Confederate battle flag, which still flies at the South Carolina state capitol in Columbia. It quickly became a trending topic on Twitter as news of the shooting spread. How could an atrocity like this happen today, people asked. Well, just look at the flag pole.
The Confederate flag is more complicated than the Rhodesian and South African flags. For many Americans, it is an instantly recognizable symbol of hate. (Incidentally, around the world, it's still an instantly recognizable symbol of America, as Civil War scholar David Blight has noted.) But some cling to other interpretations. These folks claim the flag stands for history, for heritage. Whether they realize it or not, that heritage inescapably is one of racism: Like the Rhodesian and South African flags, the Confederate flag was a banner of inequality from its very creation in 1861.
The fourth flag in the news this week is a quite different case, both in what it symbolizes and how it came to be a symbol. The Rainbow flag, an international symbol of LGBT pride, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, as part of the museum's design collection.
The flag was created in 1978 by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker. As he told MoMa in an interview, the idea began to take shape in 1976. Baker was a Vietnam War veteran and a drag queen. It was the year of the United States Bicentennial, and the American flag was inescapable.
"I thought, a flag is different than any other form of art. It’s not a painting, it’s not just cloth, it is not just a logo---it functions in so many different ways. I thought that we needed that kind of symbol, that we needed as a people something that everyone instantly understands...that influence really came to me when I decided that we should have a flag, that a flag fit us as a symbol, that we are a people, a tribe if you will."
Baker thought a flag would help his tribe be seen, something Harvey Milk, the influential gay leader, convinced Baker was critical to the cause. Milk stressed "how important it was to be visible," Baker explains. "A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility, or saying, 'This is who I am!'"
Baker created the first Rainbow flag in the attic of the Gay Community Center in San Francisco with the help of nearly 30 volunteers. They soaked fabric in trash cans full of dye, fed them through a sewing machine, and laboriously ironed the strips at the other end. The massive banner flew for the first time in United Nations Plaza in downtown San Francisco on June 25, 1978. Following its debut, the Rainbow flag spread widely. "I hoped it would be a great symbol but it has transcended all of that," Baker told the museum. "It became so much bigger than me, than where I was producing it, much bigger even than the US. Now it’s made all over the world."
The Rainbow flag has little to do with the killings in South Carolina; it's certainly no consolation. In a way, talking about flags seems insignificant or perhaps even inappropriate in the wake of the loss. Maybe they're just another distraction.
Still, the story of this fourth flag seems worth mentioning. It's a reminder that symbols are not accidental. We may not be able to divest old symbols of their power, but we can choose to leave them behind. We can take the flag down from the flag pole. What's more, we can create a new one to take its place.
There will always be people, like Roof, who dig up the flags of extinct nations in an effort to preserve backward ideals. And there will continue to be those who selfishly place their own interpretation of the Confederate flag ahead of the one the rest of us have agreed upon. But as Baker pointed out, symbols are about visibility, and their power derives from exposure (in this way, they're more like logos than works of art). As we strive for a more just society, we should keep this in mind. It means there's good reason to retire the symbols that impede our progress---and to create new ones that carry us forward.
