The flip side is also sad but ultimately useful, I know to avoid shops that proudly display the Trump, Let's Go Brandon, Blue Lives Matter, Confederate Flag, Don't Tread on Me, the one weird flag that's like fuck Biden but written with guns, or honestly the American flag. And look, I completely agree with the stance "those don't necessarily imply homophobia," you can hate Biden and love the gays, you can love America and the gays, plenty of my conservative friends do, but the kind of person who flies the flags at their home or business is on a whole different level.
Sometimes you'll be ok temporarily in those spaces until one of their friends/family shows up who's not and it becomes a problem. Generally, you don't have to wait that long.
> or honestly the American flag
this is especially disheartening. As a child of an immigrant family, one of the first things I'm going to do when I buy a house is proudly fly an American flag. I love our country and there are many reasons to be proud of it and its flag, and they're the reasons so many people want to immigrate here in the first place
YOUR comment is contributing to the toxic division. You're witnessed someone sharing their world and what they do to feel safe - and you're telling them its wrong and they should stop. Maybe you can listen to them instead, understand that certain people live in a different reality than you. You should try to see what you can do to make the environment around you welcoming to others who may have different experiences than you. It is not their responsibility to throw their safety and wellbeing away because you don't like that people view some symbol of yours negatively.
> As a child of an immigrant family, one of the first things I'm going to do when I buy a house is proudly fly an American flag. I love our country and there are many reasons to be proud of it
I am an American born here, and I grew up with an American flag on my house. I would never move away, and I'm proud to live in America, one of the greatest nations the world has seen - if not the greatest. There are many reasons to be proud of it, yes.
Does it have problems though? Yes. It is NOT a perfect place. Not everyone here feels equally safe and respected. America has long a history of division. Slavery, JimCrow, Red-lining, the aids crisis, etc. Strong histories of division that are unfortunate and real and have long-lasting implications even today. Please realize that many people exist in a reality that does not show love equally to all. it is not a place where all men are created equal, and not a place where all men live equal - although that is a lofty and noble goal America has repeated for generations. The parent comment shared symbols that raise the odds that he (she?) won't be treated equally. They're identifying symptoms of the disease of inequity, not contributing to it.
Yeah, including me, thanks for trying to shut my opinion down too. It's laughable how people like you, who act so high and mighty about giving underprivileged people a voice, only want to do so when the underprivileged are saying what you want them to.
> They're identifying symptoms of the disease of inequity, not contributing to it.
I disagree. I claim they are contributing to it. Your opinion does not factor into my opinion, and I hope people like you can see how you're just exploiting the plight of others to serve your own views, rather than sincerely trying to help give them all a platform.
Maybe putting one on your house is OK, but the more fanatic you seem, the more on alert I am. Most normal people I meet just use it on 4th of July or something, but if you are draping yourself, your business, your car in it, then I assume you have a higher likelihood of being tribal for a tribe I am not part of.
And my experience is the people who fly the flag the most are the first to cheat on taxes and try to take advantage of others in society (especially not in their tribe), and then use that “patriotism” as a veil to hide behind.
Same thing with all the other signals Spivak mentioned.
It's all signaling & identification, so if you don't want people seeing a Thin Blue Line flag & going "maybe that's not somewhere I want to be", talk with the thin-blue-line people & get them to stop doing the things that make some people want to avoid them.
Eh, don't really like this concept as a general principle. 'Pattern-matching' can often just be discrimination.
FWIW, I think it is fine to make inferences based on what flags people are flying and avoid overly patriotic people.
> if you don't want people seeing a predominantly black neighborhood & going "maybe that's not somewhere I want to be", talk with the people living in black neighborhoods & get them to stop doing the things that make some people want to avoid them.
Do you still think there's nothing wrong with prejudice, or in your words, pattern-matching?
What, we are supposed to ignore obvious and true signals that exist in the real world?
It just felt like the place would be loudly and proudly nationalistic and as an alien, I would be more welcome elsewhere.
Canadians proudly do the same, FWIW.
There are neighbourhoods where nearly every single house has a flagpole with the American flag in it. In my ~4km x 4km area where I walk my dog regularly, I can think of one house that has a Canadian flag—and that’s the Kwakwaka’wakw design (https://www.canadiannativeflag.ca).
There are occasional flag decals, but many of them are also Pride variants of the Canadian flag.
I see more Canadian flag decals on businesses (but usually in a group of decals, including pride flag decals, city decals, etc.) or maple leaf accents to business logos, in part because there is some signalling going on that "we are a Canadian-owned business" (even if it isn’t really true anymore, like Tim Hortons). I rarely see Canadian businesses flying a flag or mounting a flag in store.
Canadians often have Canadian flag patches or decals on luggage &c. when travelling so that it’s a signal that ”we aren’t American” because we often get confused with Americans and treated poorly because the Ugly American Tourist stereotype exists, with reason.
There’s likely to be a bit of a drop in flag flying because the signals have been sent by Canada’s white nationalists that the flag is theirs given their raucous and obnoxious displays in Coutts and Ottawa, which has left an even bigger distaste for overt nationalistic displays than Canadians usually show. (We are proud of being Canadian, but we’re not obnoxiously patriotic most of the time, and we are mostly disdainful of outright nationalists.)
There’s one other point: it is seen as downright unAmerican for a politician to not be wearing an American flag pin on their lapel. The Canadian equivalent is not wearing one of those crappy disposable Legion poppies in early November (we’ve seriously had politicians called out for wearing an enamelled poppy).
Personally, I care less about what I mean when I write and more about how people might read my writing.
Huh, that’s kinda surprising. I’m not American, but always had the impression that Americans used the American flag like the British use CCTV cameras — putting them everywhere essentially decoratively, because everyone else does, even in situations where they don’t add anything.
(I absolutely understand the problem with the Confederate flag: that’s much weirder than say the English (i.e. not U.K.) flag, which itself seems to only be used in the two contexts of football and nationalism).
No, not all X are Y, but if I'm going to have to spend time and effort to figure out if this X is Y when I could just not, I'm going to choose not. That's just easier for me.
