It's the flag, the one that represents our country. Some people still fly it in front of their homes. Some people actually have them flying from their cars. I remember a time nearly 20 years ago when everyone was flying them, carrying them... it was a different time. When I look around today, I start to think it was a different place.
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color." - Colin Kaepernick
That's where it really all started. Yes, there were a few people here and there who burned flags or danced on them or whatever, but for the most part it was Colin, kneeling on a football field. I could spend time going into his reasons for doing so - what he said they were and what I believe they were - but that's not necessary for this post. Colin further explained that much of what he was protesting was police brutality. White police officers shooting unarmed black men. Half the problem with his supposed reason is that he was basing it on recent wide spread news media coverage of unarmed black men who were killed during police interactions. Quite a few of those very covered stories turned out not to be as benign as they were billed. Full disclosure: Hands up, don't shoot never happened. On average, about 10 unarmed black men are shot by the police every year. You are far more likely to be killed by the police if you are white. That's an inconvenient fact no one ever talks about. All 10 of them MAY have been tragic. Unarmed doesn't equal not dangerous. However, we are literally upending our history for something that is more rare than death by lightning strike.
That's all the background I'm giving, because this post will be way too long if I start talking about systemic racism, Critical Race Theory, and the 1619 project. The fact is, in this country, there are people who truly feel they are oppressed. Maybe it's because oppression in our country, at least for the last 50 years, is not the way oppression is defined by a good portion of the rest of the world. A few examples:
Go to Iran and start a public fight for women's equality issues.
Go to Saudi Arabia and fly a pride flag.
Go to Hong Kong and protest China.
Go to Russia and complain about Vladimir Putin.
I could keep going, but I don't think it's necessary. Oppression, true oppression, isn't something most living US citizens can comprehend. Oppression is a statue of some Confederate General, someone flying the Confederate flag, a person saying something someone disagrees with...shall I keep going? Oppression in the US is about words and requires trigger warning. Oppression in Russia is getting poisoned by the former KGB. Oppression in China is re-education camps and slave labor. Oppression in Saudi Arabia is a death sentence. In Iran, the woman gets stoned for being raped, while her rapist walks free... by law. I think I'm making my point, but maybe not.
This morning I woke up to the news that the citizens of Cuba are protesting their communist overlords, who have, not surprisingly, made living in Cuba pretty terrible. (People don't try to swim the 90 miles to Florida for nothing.) One of the articles I read had this picture posted:
Amazing. People in an oppressive country, are carrying an American flag. Let's rewind to 2019:
Those people there are Hong Kong Citizens protesting the Chinese government with.... an American Flag.
Why? What do all these people, from other countries, see in our flag that our own citizens fail to see. Recently a BLM Chapter in Utah declared the US Flag a Hate Symbol. But in truly oppressive countries with truly oppressed people, they carry that flag as a symbol of something they want, something they crave, something for which they hope. Frederick Douglass had that same hope, which he expressed in the same speech that leftists drag out on 4th of July. You see Douglass new that a nation founded on the principles in the Declaration of Independence would (and did) shine a light on the injustice of slavery. That the genius of the founders and the country they created would necessitate the end of slavery and eventually the equality (not equity) that the slaves craved. That flag stands for hope. It is a light to all the oppressed in the world. We would do well to remember that.
When evil calls itself a martyr
When all your hopes come crashing down
Someone will pull her from the rubble
There she stands
We've seen her flying torn and tattered
We've seen her stand the test of time
And through it all the fools have fallen
There she stands
By the dawn's, early light
And through the fight. She stands
~Michael W Smith
Comments