#STARS AND STRIPES DAILY FREE#

Was it possible that as a result of the election and the social pressure in recent years to lower the Confederate flag that some of America’s most hackneyed bigotries had found a second life, passing as American nationalism and flying free under the socially acceptable guise of the American flag? It was the America that Donald Trump had referred to throughout his election campaign, engaged in the kind of dog whistle politics that had led the likes of the Klu Klux Klan to endorse him (if you were really listening, “make America great again” meant no more than “make America white again”) and that, more frighteningly, had gotten him elected.Īnd as criticism of the Trump administration’s racist, Islamophobic and isolationist policies mounted, the profusion of flags only seemed to deepen. But this was the first time the flag had made me feel afraid.įlags – big and small – sprung from mailboxes, billowing grandly from steel flagpoles planted absurdly on narrow lawns: on 9 November 2016, what had been anodyne patriotism felt suddenly hostile: storebought symbols of a “new” America. I knew my loop I could have even told you which cul de sacs to avoid, because the homeowners sometimes left their dog off-leash.Īs a 30-year-old American, this wasn’t the first time I’d encountered the stars and stripes.

I wasn’t sure how long they’d been there, but it couldn’t have been more than a day.

No sooner had I rounded the corner of the main road into a neighboring development than I was greeted by the red bloom of several freshly strung American flags. Should I slow my stride so as not to startle the white woman up ahead? Should I give up my space on the sidewalk to the oncoming white man and his dog? Does my outfit identify me clearly enough as a recreational jogger and not a criminal? As a black man post-election, I felt even less certain of what threats I might face outside my front door.

Stars and stripes daily