I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. -James Baldwin
What’s in a symbol that costs 16 cents wholesale and comes on a stick?
One that consists of a small piece of rough fabric, maybe the size of your hand, with tiny, individual strands dyed red, white and blue? It’s star-spangled, trying to shine for everything that America represents: speed, markets, capitalism, productivity…I’ll have you name it.
Perhaps for you this symbol means nothing but pride. Pride for country. Pride for history. For family, freedom, opportunity.
That’s definitely it for me. Sometimes. I grew up as an upper-middle-class-first-generation-Jamaican-Guyanese-Black-American. Privileged and somewhat foreign, my lineage sounds long enough to be a Starbucks order: USA’s only legal liquid crack. This country (as well as many others) crawls across my skin like some unsettled energy trying to figure out how to express itself. Some days the fidgeting is more apparent. Like that afternoon I went to the U.S. women’s national soccer team’s (USWNT) last 2019 World Cup send-off match in Harrison, N.J.
It was a glaringly hot May day as we arrived at Red Bull Stadium. Families paraded the streets all face-painted and glittered. The crowds were formidably femme with young girls and women dressed like Rocket Pops, melting in their sweat. Minivans and SUVs clogged the streets as the unfortunate wandered to find parking. My girlfriend, Magdalene, and I were among them, riding with some of my teammates from my footie community, Dyke Soccer. We rolled in just minutes after kickoff in the back of an old grey Honda that had eyelashes fluttering over the headlights: “Pardon Moi.” The car. That was her name.
I was wearing my 2015 Megan Rapinoe jersey. Number 15. A tight size S. I was bursting out the seams with USWNT trivia for anyone who cared to listen. Like, “Did you know that Becky Sauerbrunn said that if she was a video game character she’d be Lara Croft from Tomb Raider?” Which, by the way, I never got to share because we were so caught up gossiping about which national team players we found hot and who was gay or not. Our priority was fueling the fire of our sensual daydreams as salsa music on the radio peppered our fangirl chatter.
By the time we walked to our gate, we were ready for our patriotic pantomime. Call it a primal surge from a national call to action. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” roared within the rafters, beckoning us to our seats, hot pretzels and overpriced beers. Sodas hissed at the snap of a bottle cap. My heart purred.
Stadium staff handed each of us mini American flags with a smile, with a nod, with utter indifference. Boredom. I imagined that for one recipient, the little trinket made for some cute momento they may or may not save. Another person, I imagined, would see it as an essential tool for their American sports fan kit. But I knew, at least for one person in particular, that that flag was…inconvenient.
Mid-game, Magdalene left to go to the bathroom and came back without it. I asked what had happened. She said, “I threw it out.”
“You did what?!” I laughed.
I couldn’t stop chuckling because this was “Classic Magdalene,” the girl who likes to have her hands free. Our bags were at bag check so between juggling our phones, wallets and two large bottles of water, having something else to hold on to was a bit of a burden for her. My laughter was brimming with the familiar. It was the kind of chuckle that bubbles, say, when Steve Urkel from Family Matters breaks something. Again. Turns the whole house upside down. Oh, Magdalene. In my head, I cue the audience laugh track….
Then check behind the curtain.
Hiding behind my hilarity was discomfort. Overprotection. The type that tenses tender feet that can’t handle being touched. You just don’t go there without getting kicked.
Magdalene throwing the flag in the garbage tickled the child in me that said the pledge every morning before school; who sang the national anthem before every basketball game, soccer match and track meet; who witnessed 9/11 playing over and over again in the dark den of her childhood basement. It teased the young girl who was frequently reminded of her allegiance and the moral importance behind it. She could never forget.
“So you trashed it?” I said with a smirk.
“Yeah,” Magdalene said. “Fuck that flag.”
And where were all the Mexicans in the crowd? she asked. (Magdalene, the proud Afro-Dominican.) Why wasn’t anyone handing out Mexican flags? And how can Americans be obsessed with tacos and still hate on the people who made them?
All valid points. Some of which hadn’t occurred to me because I was so blinded by my stripes. I could suddenly see the stadium’s true colors: White with a few accents of brown. Our sole Mexican friend, Roberta stood out even more to me. Roberta, an army of one, shouting, “Go Mexico!” anytime her team touched the ball.
I could tell Magdalene felt out of place — unwelcome, even — at her first USWNT soccer match. She wriggled in her seat. Her eyes wandered off the pitch to find herself. To her right, she found a quiet Mexican family: A mom, dad and their 10-year-old daughter. She smiled and gave them a wave.
Fuck that flag, huh? I thought. Understandably so, especially if Magdalene didn’t feel like it represented her.
One of the reasons I fell in love with Magdalene was because her tethers aren’t tied to where my ego clings for its life: my sense of what makes a good person, a good citizen. Every so often she’ll say something that allows me to breathe a bit easier. Or squirm. I’ve squirmed often with her. Against her. Magdalene gently questions my ties — tugs on my threads — and I begin to unravel.
Unpack.
On the field, American midfielder Megan Rapinoe sprinted up and down the sidelines with newly dyed hair: pink instead of the usual platinum blond.
At first, I didn’t recognize her from my seat high up in the rafters. But when I did, I remembered how much she went through in the past year and how much she might’ve changed.
In October 2016, Rapinoe — by then a 10-year veteran of the United States soccer team — knelt during the national anthem before the kickoff of an international match. This was the first time she did this wearing the red, white and blue, after having stirred a fuss for kneeling during a Seattle Reign FC game. The act was radical, but not unique. Rapinoe took a knee in solidarity with former starting 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
That fall, Kaepernick sat down during the national anthem of a preseason game to call attention to the unchecked police brutality wounding and killing people of color across the country.
Black Lives Matter.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color,” he explained to the press. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Many NFL administrators and military members, relatives and supporters were up in arms.
The next game, he decided to kneel in an effort to show more respect without giving up the peaceful protest. His actions were met with widespread support. Other athletes joined him, including Rapinoe.
“Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties,” she said after the Reign FC match. “It was something small that I could do and something that I plan to keep doing in the future and hopefully spark some meaningful conversation around it.”
Their actions were also met with harsh criticisms and severe consequences. Some people still say Kaepernick is “disrespectful” to all the people who serve this country — that he should be “hung and shot in public squares.” Football fans have burned his jersey. Ultimately, the 33-year-old has been blackballed from the NFL and hasn’t seen the field since.
Rapinoe, who kept up her protests, has not faced racism or experienced such a dire career punishment. But she knew she was taking an immense risk, that she would have to explain herself to the media, that she could eventually lose her job. She knew that at the end of the day, there was no payoff greater than standing in your truth.
I believe this to be true, so then why is it that when I’m at an event and the trumpets start blaring, my legs start to shake? Where does my courage go? Where does our country’s courage go?
My friend Jen Sinkler once asked me, “Why aren’t we all kneeling?”
Many of us have very little to lose and much to gain in a collective movement.
Still, here we have Kaepernick and Rapinoe. Some of the biggest public sports figures willing to put their childhood dreams on the line “to get political.”
“Shut up and play,” they said. But when Rapinoe knelt instead, even those people started to ask, Can you really be a representative of the United States and protest the symbol that identifies us? (All the while forgetting Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos who had raised the Black Power fists in 1968.) Is that patriotism?
Back then, U.S. Soccer answered, “No” even though they have since changed their minds. Rapinoe received a firm slap on the wrist from the organization and she agreed to comply with their new policy: All national team players must stand during the national anthem. For a while, Rapinoe stood with her hands behind her back instead of her hand on her heart, opting out of singing.
“I can understand if you think that I’m disrespecting the flag by kneeling, but it is because of my utmost respect for the flag and the promise it represents that I have chosen to demonstrate in this way,” Rapinoe wrote in the Players’ Tribune. “When I take a knee, I am facing the flag with my full body, staring straight into the heart of our country’s ultimate symbol of freedom — because I believe it is my responsibility, just as it is yours, to ensure that freedom is afforded to everyone in this country.”
It would be a long time until Anthem v. Pinoe headlines stopped trending.
Maybe because as her girlfriend, Sue Bird, said, “Megan is at the boss level in the video game of knowing herself.”
It’s funny that some people take that knowing as a threat — especially when you’re a Black man like Kaepernick.
At the crux of America’s flag anxiety is the word “symbol.”
Symbols are the empty vessels — I mean, if we could ever imagine them void — that give this world meaning. A flag, a badge, a color. Anything really: Consider a coffee mug, even.
There was a time in your life that you didn’t know what a mug was. Not until someone told you its purpose, or you played with the new object yourself. Not until you grabbed ahold of the ceramic, let it slip through your fingers and watched it splinter on the floor. How your mom yelled at you, even though you cut your hand trying to pick it all up.
Firm. Fragile. Dangerous. Temporary home to hot Nesquik. Your favorite. The mug quickly becomes all of these things and redefines itself as you fill it with your own thoughts, beliefs, experiences, memories and other people’s thoughts, beliefs, experiences and memories that you’ve absorbed over time. It becomes so full that the sight of the word “mug” will subconsciously (and consciously) bring up so much more than a mere search in Merriam Webster. Look into your cup and you’ll see your reflection.
Symbols mean different things to different people. Meanings are inherited from older generations, from schooling, from the environment, from the media, from living life. What I learned to be “pretty,” “beautiful,” “honorable” and “shameful,” is based on what I’ve taken in from this world. These definitions aren’t always true in all cases or for everyone. I keep flipping through my own dictionary to find a whole trove of paradoxes.
Like when I see the flag, I remember summer nights smelling the alluring smoke of BBQ and fireworks on the Fourth of July. I also remember going to a network marketing conference where the flag stood big and tall on the stage as the speaker told us that we were “idiots” if we didn’t vote for Trump, “who stands for what this country is about.” To me, the flag equals warmth, connection, celebration. It also equals anger, marginalization, disbelief. I understand that not everyone has these conflicting emotions when they see that banner. Maybe all they feel is admiration. Maybe all they feel is hate. One thing I do know is: None of us can truly see anything without bringing our past with us.
We wear the past like dusty old glasses that have scratches and cracks that can prevent us from seeing reality or the humanity in one another. This is partially why a lot of us are floundering over this flag dilemma. We engage in screaming-in-all-caps “debates” on Facebook walls, listen to the echo of our own voices, and wonder why we don’t see the same murals in our minds.
While we have these individual experiences coloring our lives, we do meet in the middle somewhere. We have these narratives that string together the clues of who we are. In that sense, collective symbols, like flags, are agreements and exchanges among a body of pins — various points of consciousness. We are all connected and affected by these threads, for better or for worse. This is why it is important for us to reevaluate collective symbols as we evolve as humanity. This means bringing everybody’s experience to the table and listening to what’s really being said — and particularly listening to the voices that aren’t often given stage.
So what is it that I’m hearing when people protest the flag? What is it that I’m hearing when people protest the protest?
On both sides I hear:
I am hurt. I’ve been hurt. I’m hurting.
You’re not respecting me.
You’re not hearing me.
You aren’t here for me.
When I see people continuously kicking and screaming over the kneeling: I see a lack of compassion. A lack of introspection. Closed ears and closed minds. Inner turmoil that doesn’t quite know how to find the right words.
On some level, I see myself. I remember times when I was called out on my own bullshit — homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism (yes, alive in a black queer woman, perhaps still). Every time I was called out, a small part of my world cracked open. Oh, how it hurt my ego. How angry I felt at that other person for correcting me. How dare she! How sorry I felt later. How ashamed. During those moments, I wanted to hide from people. I hated making mistakes. I hated people thinking that I could be a bad or an ignorant person. Then I learned I could separate my harmful behavior from my being. I discovered that all the -isms that scream inside me don’t ever have to become -ists. You just have to cut them out.
I grew up in a white-dominated, patriarchal society so I have adopted some of its false beliefs. All Americans have. As children, we took them on to no fault of our own. But I’m learning to take responsibility in every moment that I become aware. To Cut it out! no matter how much it I think it pains me. That “pain,” I realized — the “pain” that feels like you’re chopping off a part of yourself that will never return — is actually the release my old worldview so that I can open up to a new reality. One where I learn to love myself and others more deeply than I knew was possible.
Still, it can feel scary. But even if cutting out the -ists leaves some fear that can prevent us from stepping into those tough conversations again, we’ve got to remember: those scars are proof that we can heal and create a new body of people. Our hope is not to relapse.
I can’t speak for all protesters, but when I’ve watched Kaepernick kneel, bow, or close their eyes in demonstration, I sense not only deep and agonizing disappointment, but also the vision for a new kind of country, where we are able to truly see and hear each other. This vision comes from a knowingness that we can do better, that we need to do better. That for sure is inspiring.
But the kneeling aspect is what really draws me in. Kneeling in many cultural traditions, is a form of surrender — and in this case, “surrendering” doesn’t mean “giving up” or “being weak.” Instead, Kaepernick’s surrender, to me, takes the form of an open invitation. It’s an invitation for others to sit with their own values and discomfort. It’s an ask for each of us to join in, to observe our beliefs and biases and look at what needs to be cut out and what can be kept.
For many of us, it’s also a surrender of these privileges that have created false hierarchies among us. It’s a commitment to balance the scales and end the vicious cycles of bloodshed.
This is the sort of inner work that unfortunately cannot be forced upon someone else. We can only envision that others will make their way there as we build new worlds, new systems, with co-conspirators, and continue to flush out our own murk. (Spoiler alert: We never will get all of the gunk out and that’s okay.)
The work requires us to see the potential in the other to be their best selves (as hard as that can be) and hope that they are doing the same for us in all our imperfection.
The work — this work — can and must be provoked, poked and rattled by a call for more love, however that may come, be it from the depths of our sadness, rage, or joy. However long it might take. And yet we somehow must allow everyone to be on their own journey.
I can try to rip open the eyes of another.
But will they actually wake?
I pictured blood.
As I sat in the bleachers watching USA vs. Mexico, I imagined Magdalene’s flag sitting in a tiny trash bin in a bathroom stall, covered in tampons, pads and rolled toilet paper, seeping in red DNA. The white stripes of the banner were stained with the lives of women many have tried to erase or make small, “crazy,” “bitchy,” “slutty.” The lives of women who are beginning to remember themselves, their power.
Me, too.
I am also remembering because there’s a shift going on. Don’t you feel it? It’s the hormones. (Horman: the Greek word meaning “to set in motion.”) A new cycle approaches, howling from the depths of our wombs.
Time’s up.
Suddenly, the final whistle blows and the game is over.
I was so in my head and so sure of the outcome, I was hardly paying attention to the score of the match. I glanced at the board. America, 3. Mexico, 0. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” the crowd boomed. I high-fived my friends and hollered with the masses as more “fun facts” trickled into my brain:
“Did I tell you that one of Tobin’s favorite hobby is cutting grass?”
What I couldn’t tell you, though, is what happened to my flag.
I probably dropped it, mindlessly trying to rush out of the stadium to beat the homebound traffic. In my mind, I saw it lying at the foot of my seat — accompanied by others shed by proud yet forgetful, indifferent or dissenting fans — being swept away by custodians equipped with brooms that will service another game.
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