Mixed Identity Politics?
Cycling in southern Virginia recently, I noticed a large flag mounted on a 20-foot pole in someone’s front yard—with a conflicted message. The flag, as it turned out, had an identity issue: one side was the conventional Stars and Stripes U.S national flag; the other side was the “Southern Cross” of the Confederate flag (I assume it must have been two flags sewn together; I wasn’t about to stop and ask.) Homes with the two flags displayed separately are not unusual. But this two-faced flag combination captured the mixed identity of those who declare they are patriots, but who owe allegiance to something that is not quite the United States as conceived by the rest of us.
The more common two separate flags in the yard speak loudly for a tribe that has stood for white supremacy* and deep suspicion of the federal government, while also declaring their patriotism. That’s the perversely named “nativist” tribe, by which is meant, not affinity with actual native Americans, but quite the reverse: it’s rather an affinity with white people who invaded from Europe, slaughtered most of the indigenous folks and drove them off their lands. Let’s call the newly arisen nativists “neo nativists.” (Not to be confused with the same psychological term applied to cognitive development.)
Continue reading “Tribalism, Patriotism, White Supremacy, and the South”