Minnesota’s Racist State Flag Isn’t The Only One That Could Use a Makeover

Photo:  Nicku (Shutterstock)
Photo: Nicku (Shutterstock)
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Minnesota lawmakers have proposed a commission to redesign the state flag, according to CBS News. The state representatives and residents have agreed the flag is tainted with racial undertones. This isn’t the first flag found to honor a disgraceful moment in history.

Rep. Mike Freiberg sponsored a bill on changing the state flag arguing the imagery on the seal needs some fixing. The imagery in question is an Indigenous person riding on the back of a horse as a white farmer tends to the land - a depiction of the displacement of Indigenous by the colonizers who “found” America.

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“I just don’t think it’s a fair representation of Minnesota history, the diagram that’s on the seal. It wasn’t designed with input from the people it depicts on it, and I think that’s a real problem,” said Freiberg in a statement.

According to St. Paul Magazine, the flag may be an accurate depiction of history after all. The Dakota nations were relocated by the US in the 1850s and their resources were taken by the ever-growing Minnesota population. Naturally, a war began. This led to the largest public mass execution in history, the hanging of Dakota men and the imprisonment of women and children in concentration camps.

Black people come from a similar place fighting against Confederate symbolism because of its glorification of slavery and racism. But we didn’t stop at monuments. State flags also bore the cruel history, at times, intentionally.

Read more from CNN:

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday signed a bill that takes a historic step to retire the last US state flag to feature the Confederate battle flag.

The signing caps a swift referendum on the flag from the Mississippi state Legislature, which passed the bill on Sunday following weeks of racial justice protests across the country. The flag, first adopted in 1894, has red, white and blue stripes with the Confederate battle emblem in one corner.

“I know there are people of goodwill who are not happy to see this flag changed. They fear a chain reaction of events erasing our history – a history that is no doubt complicated and imperfect,” Reeves said Tuesday.

Other southern states still hang flags born from the same racist origin. Georgia’s state flag was changed to Confederate battle flag after Brown v Board of Education to show intentional opposition to desegregation. Even after some revisions, the flag is still considered a reflection the Confederacy. Arkansas lawmakers introduced bills in 2019 to take away the Confederate reference to the state flag that was purposefully added in 1923, per CNN.

And the list goes on....

We live in a country where flags hold significance and symbolism (consider the modern BLM or pride flags). Challenging these state flags forces lawmakers to reconsider what it means to wave a flag that represents a hateful past.

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