It’s Time for a New Flag

Years ago I met a man who described himself to me as being an albino-negro. We struck up an interesting and memorable conversation. I don’t know all the details about his being albino-negro, although he did look it, and that is how he described himself, so I took him at his word, and I respected his self-designation. We enjoyed our conversation together and became acquaintances or friends. One thing that we bonded around was our shared human experience: our particular difficulties of living in this world.  We developed a camaraderie based on our shared pain in the human experience. I mentioned to him that various times I had been made fun of for being too skinny, or having a long nose, or being weird, (this was prior to the time in my life when deeper sorrows began to enter my experience, things like deaths and diseases), and we laughed together about these things, and I admitted to him that while those were painful for me, it was likely more difficult for him, being albino. Nevertheless, no life is without its traumas. 

I bring up this story, including the details I chose to share, because it came into my mind today when I saw a sign that read: ‘trans rights are human rights’ and I thought about this albino-negro friend of mine from so many years ago. He was also in a relatively super-minority, similar to trans-people, and I could imagine him telling me that ‘albino-negro rights are human rights’ and I would have agreed with him and said of course they are. If I would have told my friend that people with long noses have a right too, just like anyone else, I think he would have agreed with me. In fact, can any of us honestly think of a human group, large or very small, that we would say don’t have human rights? I hope not. But conversely, why must we single out one very small, particular group for special status to the exclusion of everyone else? Or worse, in place of everyone else’s rights? This is what has happened and everyone knows it, everyone in the majority, and everyone in other minorities (girls come to mind) who have now been forced to compete against the trans-minority.

Later in the day I passed a restaurant that had a progress-pride flag in the window, the kind with a triangle of white, pink, blue, brown and black near the pole and the rainbow running across the banner, and it struck me what a contradiction that flag has become, between what it was intended to symbolize and what it actually has come to stand for. In word it is supposed to stand for inclusion and diversity however, sadly, in practice it has come to represent very nearly the opposite. Under that flag we’ve seen small businesses ruined, families impoverished, girls and boys abused, mutilated and even in some cases killed, people have lost their jobs for citing simple biological facts, and the list can go on and on, but we all know the truth, we don’t need more examples, we likely know some of them personally.  

The methods which the progress-pride flag stands for now aren’t accomplishing what the people that the flag represents supposedly intend. They aren’t fostering inclusion by their actions. Like the saying goes: believe what they do, not what they say. The acts taken under that banner have become meanness, aggressiveness and destruction for anyone not represented by those colors, and even for many included in the rainbow. DEI doesn’t produce the fruits that it says it does, but rather it is divisive, exclusionary and intimidating. Everyone knows this, except possibly the few that it is enriching. Yet, even they know it, but they also know who butters their bread.

This isn’t to say we couldn’t defend these minorities, the actual people who need defending, in a good and kind way, in a way that really does produce the good fruit that we all want, that of unity and inclusion. But it requires a different strategy. The old flag needs to be retired. Even as one who is sympathetic with the people for whom the colors of the flag represent, I can’t sympathize with the methods employed by those who wave that flag. It has come to be a symbol of aggression, selfish disregard of others, and even cruelty.

I’m not the first person to point these things out, but when anyone does, they are almost always met with anger, attack and some sort of violence, either by word or action. Doesn’t this simply confirm the point we are making? Of course it does.

So why would any of us support that? Why would anyone hang that flag in their window? If we support people, all people, then we should support something other than that, we should hang something else, something that truly is inclusive and respectful and symbolizes all of us. Find a new symbol, or an old one, that defends the rights of minorities, and doesn’t trample on the right of majorities, nor trample on the rights of other minorities. A good cause is a just cause if it is has integrity woven into its ends and its means, so that it treats everyone with equal love and respect. Not favoring some colors, or people, to the exclusion of others.

~FS