Today, Explained - Our complicated relationship with the flag

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar openly celebrate the American flag. But a lot of Black Americans feel differently. What does that tell us about identity today? This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Image of Kendrick Lamar performing at the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images.  If you have a question, give us a call on 1-800-618-8545 or send us a note here. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Hi, my name is Al and I have a question about the relationship between African Americans and the American flag. I've just been thinking about the Kendrick Lamar performance and really Beyonce's country album and how both of them used the American flag or at least its colors.

I'm just interested to see how that's kind of evolved or where it sits today or tomorrow and yesterday. Anyway. I've been thinking about this too. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a Beyoncé fan. By the time you hear this, I'll be recovering from her July 4th show outside DC. Beyoncé famously doesn't do many interviews, but she's intentional about every choice she makes. So a big concert on the 4th in the nation's capital isn't a coincidence. With Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé leaned into her American identity. And that was kind of surprising.

It's a weird time for America right now. We have ice raids, messing with birthright citizenship, and getting in wars in the Middle East again. But it's not just Beyoncé with the Americana aesthetic. That's where Kyle Dennis comes in. Last year, he wrote an article about artists making use of American flag imagery. Not just Beyoncé, but also the rapper Sexy Red, who released a mixtape called Make America Sexy Again.

I think part of it is probably because we're at a point where how we define America very so broadly and so widely across generations that we're in a moment of okay is it okay to have pride in this country knowing what it is doing across the global south or what it's doing in the Middle East what it's doing to its own constituents back home is it okay to still look at this flag and look at this country and be like I can still find pride and love for this thing and what my ancestors helped build and what I helped contribute to this country to make this a livable place that's full of diversity and full of so much goodness.

Can that live alongside the bad? Those are questions that I think we're all consciously asking a lot more, especially having access to everybody's thoughts and opinions online, and a lot of the conversations feel a lot more tense than maybe they actually are for the general public. Okay, let's go through some of these artists. Where should we start? So, Sexy Red, we can start off with her.

-♪ She's bad... And Sexy B. Trust was her mixtape that had, you know, the little Drake song on there, You My Everything. -♪ You, you, you my everything Trust was her mixtape that had the little Drake song on there, You My Everything. Sexy's music is very fun, very casual, very delightfully ratchet. We're just here to have a good time with Sexy Red. The way that I kind of interpreted her use of the American flag and really wasn't even

her use of the flag specifically, was her use of MAGA aesthetics on top of that. Because it's not just the American flag on stage during her use of MAGA aesthetics on top of that. Because it's not just the American flag on stage during her sets during this time, she has an inflatable red cap that says Make America Sexy Again. She's selling merch and towels and baseball caps that have Make America Sexy Again on it. And the way I kind of interpreted that was as much as there are people in this country who find a sort of freedom in how balls to the wall Trump is and how just like he can say whatever he wants to say without any regard for retaliation and he's just being him and there's just like a cult of personality that's

built around being that brash and that loud, I think Sexy kind of sees a similarity in how her music just inspires you to be as ratchet and as rock it as all hell And what about Queen B Beyonce Beyonce Beyonce I I don't even really know where to begin with mrs. Carter Because it is just there's so much happening with Calboy Carter and I think from the onset I want to say I try very carefully to level out my criticisms and my critiques and my thoughts about this particular project because it is still part of a still unfurling trilogy. But generally, Cowboy Carter, when this album cover dropped, we have Beyonce sat atop a white horse

waving the American flag. This ain't Texas. It is not an altered version of the flag as a lot of previous album covers from black artists tend to do, whether that's turning the stars into bullet holes, making it black and white, making it pink and navy. This is just your regular red, white and blue flag. Everything seems to be intact. Nothing's, you know, torn or tattered. What was

interesting to me when the album cover dropped was that you don't see the entire flag. Parts of it are cropped off, the entire top half of it. Pretty much almost all the stars you don't really get to see. You can obviously make that assumption that it's the American flag, but that's a choice not to have the entire thing in the frame you could have zoomed out a couple pixels and we would have gotten the whole picture so it made me think okay this is intentional so her use of the American flag generally I do think it's just her trying to give black Americans a window to understand that it is okay for them to have pride and love for this country, especially if there are, you know, parts of bloodlines that they can really trace back

generation upon generation to this country, this land, that the contributions of their ancestors are something to be proud of. I want to go back in time a little bit. Who are some modern black musicians who use the flag to like really say something politically? So we can go, we can start looking into the 70s. Sly and the Family Stone actually did top the Billboard 200 with, there's a riot going on.

Thank you for letting me be myself. That album cover replaced the stars of the American flag with nine point stars emblazoned across a black background instead of a blue background. The LP's title was a direct response to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, which was released six months earlier. And they altered the classic look of the flag to kind of complement the album's really bleak outlook on the turbulence of the 60s and in the face of a rising black power movement. So then we can go to 1990, one of my favorite rap groups, 2Live Crew, they kicked off the

decade with Band in the USA. It was actually the first album in music history to have the RAA parental advisory sticker on it. And they kind of leaned on Americana to double down on their claim to American-ness. They were being forced out of the label of being American, both culturally and legally, due to the vulgarity of their music. So it was like, y'all are too nasty to be American, number one.

And number two, legally we won't even allow you to release this music without a sticker because it's so un-American. And they're like, oh, bet, you know what? We been in the USA. And we gon' have Americana aesthetics all over this album to let you know that this too is America. They're using not just the flag, but the colors, the word America, the acronym USA,

other Americana aesthetics to make a kind of political statement. Does utilizing the flag motif feel especially fraught right now? You know, I think of my own relationship with patriotism and I feel like I never get like, ooh, go America until, I don't know, I see Simone Biles do something every four years. And I think that's the case for most black people I know. Why are artists leaning in in this particular moment? We're seeing right now a conscious effort to redefine what American means,

whether that's culturally or whether that's legally in terms of immigration status, with them trying to take away a birthright's citizenship. If we can allow the concept of American-ness to be that malleable, why not make it malleable enough that it also fits us? Why just kind of sit down and let them rewrite what being pro-America looks like? Why should we let the MAGA crew take all of the aesthetics and make it their own when we're here too and we're not going anywhere and we haven't been going anywhere? Especially when it's coming out of a fear of America hurtling towards becoming a country

that has a minority of white people in the near future. We know where that kind of fear is coming from, but this is also our country and we also helped build it so we should also be able to access those symbols and use them for whatever we want to say in our own ways. More when we're back on Explain It To Me. No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca.

I'm Lisa Akramolder. I'm the director of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. And today is actually my 25th anniversary with the organization. I just realized that. I started as collections manager in 2000, and I became the director eight years later. The Betsy Ross House is literally a house. It's a little townhome in Philly where visitors can interact with early American history and with Betsy Ross, who's said to have made the first American flag. I think most of us probably have this image of Betsy

Ross sitting in a rocking chair by the fire, sewing this flag and then presenting it to General George Washington. Is that how it really went down? Not exactly. You're onto the right track though. Betsy Ross was actually an upholsterer. She met her husband, John Ross, while they were both doing a seven year long upholstery apprenticeship. They married and they started their own business and they were getting some pretty big jobs from important people like Ben Franklin and George Washington. So they were really on their way to a lucrative career.

So as the story goes, according to her family, she was working in her upholstery shop one day and George Washington, Robert Morris, who was a financier of the American Revolution, and George Ross, which was her late husband's uncle, came through the door and she knew they had to have been there for an important reason. They announced themselves as a committee of Congress

and stated that they had been appointed to prepare a flag and asked her if she thought she could make one, to which she replied with her usual modesty and self-reliance that, quote, she did not know, but she could try. She had never made one, but if the pattern were shown to her, she had no doubt of her ability to do it. She certainly had the skills and the supplies needed to make the flag because they weren't much different from the work that she had done as an upholsterer. So she did make one suggestion to change the design.

She said that the six pointed stars that were in the design should be changed to five pointed stars. Nothing easier was her prompt reply and folding a piece of paper in the proper manner with one clip of her ready scissors, she quickly displayed to their astonished vision the five-pointed star. She showed them her trick and they were impressed with that trick and decided that that would be a good change to the design of the flag. The reason why she chose a five-pointed star rather than six was simply it was just easier to make. Keep in mind stitching the flag for the rebel colonies

would have been an act of treason so she had to do it in secret. If caught she could have been it was just easier to make. Keep in mind, stitching the flag for the rebel colonies would have been an act of treason, so she had to do it in secret. If caught, she could have been imprisoned or executed. She had to do it in a private place, and we believe that was done in her bedroom. After her public work was done in her upholstery shop during the day, she would retire to her bedroom and sew the flag in secrecy there. Are historians in agreement that Betsy Ross is the one who made the first flag? No, they're not. And that's because there's no quote unquote smoking gun, so to speak, to prove that Betsy

made the first flag. I'd be thrilled if we could find a journal entry or a letter from George Washington referencing his meeting with Betsy. But unfortunately, nothing like that has been discovered yet anyway. But we do know that George Washington was a previous customer of Betsy. He hired her to make bedding for Mount Vernon.

Also her husband's uncle, as I said, was a member of the flag committee that visited her. So it makes sense that he knew of his nephew's recent passing and that his widow is probably struggling. So it makes sense that he knew of his nephew's recent passing and that his widow is probably struggling. So it makes sense that he'd suggest Betsy to make the flag so she could earn some money. There's also a receipt in which Betsy was paid a substantial sum of money for making flags for the Pennsylvania Navy Board, but it was a year later in 1777.

We knew she went on to make flags for over 50 years. So there's a great deal of circumstantial evidence to suggest that she had something to do with the creation, but no definitive documented proof. And that's part of the reason why there's some disagreement among historians. Lauren Henry Earlier in the show, we talked about musicians using flag iconography to send a particular message. Are there groups of people who are especially focused on this early Betsy Ross flag as a symbol of America?

Sure, yeah, there are people who have adopted not just early flags, but many of the symbols and quotes and people of the American Revolution to represent their agenda or their beliefs. Unfortunately, there are some members of the far right who have used this imagery. But now we're seeing a lot of people who identify as progressives who are using Revolutionary War iconography to represent the fight against the policies of

the current administration. In fact, a woman who carried a Betsy Ross-style flag at the Philadelphia New Kings rally this past June donated it to the Betsy Ross house and told me that she and her friends dressed like Betsy Ross and George Washington as they marched, which was really great to hear. Do you find that people who visit the Betsy Ross house feel an emotional connection to the flag on their visits? And if they do, where does that come from? Some people have a very emotional reaction when they come here. They almost consider their trip to the Betsy Ross house like a pilgrimage because the American flag is so meaningful to them. But

then there are also people who have a negative response to seeing the American flag. I think people who do feel positive emotions when they come here or when they see the flag they feel pride and they see it as a symbol of hope and unity but then it's you know some people feel anger or sadness and they view it as a symbol of exclusion or injustice or oppression. I would say that it is the most powerful and recognizable symbol of our national identity so it makes sense that people have a strong response to it, either positive or negative. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. So the flag can be complicated no matter your background.

But what if you have to defend it when it doesn't defend you? That's next. It's Explain It To Me. We're back talking about Black Americans and the American flag. I went to college with a few posters to hang on my walls. My roommate had a Jamaican flag. Her parents were from Jamaica, mine are from the US. And I would always be like, that's so cool that you have a flag you can rep. I do not have that because I'm not going to big up America. But Ted Johnson does.

He doesn't think America is perfect. But despite all of it, he says black people have been able to build lives here, create a culture here. We built the White House and he's not going to abandon that just because there's bad stuff, too. Ted is a retired US Navy commander who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he's a patriot, even though he knows the word is loaded. He told me, yeah, the flag elicits a lot of complicated feelings for him too.

Yeah. So look, the flag has sort of been hijacked a little bit, I think, by nationalists, folks that believe either America is perfect and exceptional, or at the very least, anything that it's done wrong in the past should be sort of excused by all the things that it's done well. And that is not my relationship with the flag. It's much more complicated because there has been tons of harm done under that flag. So there is no uncritical pride in the flag for me.

But it is also a flag that black folks have fought under, have bled, died and sacrificed for. The principals, you know, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, these folks call these principals out that the flag is supposed to represent. And I take the beauty of those moments with the same ugliness that the flag's supposed to represent. And I take the beauty of those moments with the same ugliness that the flag has represented. It can be both things, both things, something to be proud of and ashamed of.

And so I think if you take it that way, allow it to be complicated and complex, it becomes something beautiful and worth honoring. We were talking about how to kind of tease out this relationship between black Americans and worth honoring. We were talking about how to kind of tease out this relationship between black Americans and the flag. And one way to do that is to talk about the experience of black service members. Can you go ahead and lay out that history

of military service for us? One of the earliest instances of this that I think sort of sets the stage for everything else that happens in the country is An enslaved man named Jehu Grant in Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War He was enslaved his the man that owned him was a loyalist to the Brits He was afraid that he was going to be shipped off sold essentially to the Brits to fight for them So he runs away joins

Washington's army and then his master shows up and says, army, you've got my property and I want it back. And the army turns him back over to the guy that owns him where he serves for many years, eventually buys his freedom. And when Jackson, Andrew Jackson becomes president in the 1820s, 1830s, he makes it policy to provide pensions for those revolutionary war folks still alive. And so Jehu, like a revolutionary war veteran, applies for his pension and is denied. The government says that services rendered while a fugitive from your

master are not recognized. That is the relationship of black service members to the flag. It represents a set of principles that many would be willing to die for and also a way of life that intentionally excluded black folks for no other reason than race and and status of their servitude. And so if you look at any war, War of 1812, World War I, II, Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm, you name it, you will find black folks in uniform who have both been oppressed in the country they represent and are willing to die for that country because of the values it stands for and because of the folks that came

before them that died blood and sweat for their right to be able to, you know, serve and benefit from the programs that the military has made available to folks. My grandfather served in the military and I never got the chance to really talk with him about that and that experience. But I'm curious if you can speak to the motivations of black Americans who continue serving, especially during the Jim Crow era. I mean, the idea of fighting for a country

that's persecuting you is just so dissonant and yet a lot of black Americans have done it. Yeah, it's super complicated. I mean, I think pre-Civil War, a lot of enslaved black folks that decided to fight did so because they believed their chances at liberty, emancipation, freedom, were connected to their willingness to serve the country.

And so it was sort of like, I can earn my citizenship, I can earn my equality if I'm willing to fight for the country's interests. After the Civil War, the motivation is still very much the same because of black codes and Jim Crow, but then we get the draft. And so a lot of the black folks that served in the early part of the 20th century

were drafted into service. They weren't like, you know, eager volunteers lined up as a way of earning their citizenship or equality. But the fact that most of the large vast majority of them, nearly all of them honored that draft notice that the, you know, the sort of the commitment of citizenship, though they were treated as second class citizens, was also a sort of implicit demand for access to the full rights of the Constitution and willing to serve in the military as a sort of collateral on that demand, as a sort of down payment on the citizenship that they're demanding and eventually was delivered, you know, thanks to legislation and the Supreme Court and, you know, the movement of the public.

It was not, you know, because the country decided that what it had done was so wrong that it now must open the doors. Instead it was, these were concessions, these were gains that came at the expense of black people's lives and again, their work, their sweat, their commitment. And the progress is a product of black work. But there's also something I want to say here. It's not just one way and sort of black folks love for the flag. You know, when black folks were coming home from World War I and II, many were lynched

in uniform. So, I mean, they weren't even excused from sort of the racial dynamics by willing to die for the country. One of the most famous genres of music in this period was called coon music. And one of the... Oh. Yes. Literally, like, that word, right?

If he won't work, then let him go. Get some, get these. Get to the loo, loo, loo. And the music was basically Jim Crow put the song to make fun of black people and their desire for humanity. One of the songs was about Black people not having a flag. And what more can you do for the old man in blue? Every man says a flag of the coup.

They talked about white folks in the Northeast could fly flags from Italy, Ireland, wherever they're from, and white people in the States could just fly the American flag, black people could fly none of those because we didn't know where we were from and the United States is not ours. And so in this song, they say the black flag is basically two possums shooting dice, and that would be an accurate representation. That is like some classic racism. I don't know, you're hitting me with the classics right now. Yeah, it was the song is called Every Race Has a Flag, But the Coon. And so we are very familiar

with sort of the red, black and green pan-African flag. This was Marcus Garvey's response to this Coon genre of music, say, oh, we do have a flag. It's red, black and green for these reasons. And that continues to represent, you see a lot of Juneteenth, Kwanzaa, you know, we do have a flag. It's red, black and green for these reasons. And that continues to represent, you see a lot of Juneteenth, Kwanzaa, you know, things that have the red, black and green, that sort of pan-African black look. But what about black artists and also black people in general who just say, hey, like, yeah, our ancestors may have done all this work, but there really is no way to be a part of this slash maybe we should not be trying to be part of this. What do those, when you're having those conversations,

what do they sound like? Because I know you probably get a lot of pushback when you're having these conversations with people. So it's like what you take pride in. If you take pride in the flag because you believe America is exceptional You're going to find a lot less subscribers to that belief system Then one that if you say, you know pride in the country means being proud of the people you come from and proud of the arc

Of your people's story in this country So it is very complicated and there's no easy way through it But I will say that I think the reason part of the reason we're seeing more folks willing to sort of reclaim the flag for their own is because Gen X, I'm Gen X. I was born in 75. My generation was the first one born post Civil Rights Act of 64, really post Voting Rights Act of 65. So Jim Crow was the experience of our parents more than of us and millennials and Gen Z.

It's the same thing. So those experiences connected to the sort of hijacking of the flag to connect it to explicit statutory racism is feels generations removed from folks, black folks today, Gen X and younger, who have grown up in America where opportunity is more available, where Jim Crow kinds of racism is not as permitted, and while the country is not even close to being the kind of equal nation it was founded to be, it's made progress. And I think a reclamation of that flag by Beyonce and others is a sort of signal that, yes, we built it, yes, we've progressed here and no, we're not leaving. There's no go back to Africa.

This is home. And so if this is home, I'm gonna fly the flag of my country. And look, when Curry's hitting threes in the Olympics, when you go overseas and get to show that American passport when you land back in the States, there's parts of this country, our music culture, especially black culture

has changed the world. We've changed basketball. I mean, like there's lots to be proud of and about what the country has achieved and black Americans in particular. And for me, that is all the things that patriotism represents, not the more narrow exclusive version that tends to get more daylight. That was retired Navy commander Ted Johnson. He's an advisor at New America and a columnist for the Washington Post. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, and this is her last production with us. Thank you so much, Victoria, for your four years plus of service to this team. It was edited by our executive producer, Miranda Kennedy,

fact-checking by Melissa Hirsch, and engineering by Andrea Christensdorter. Special thank you to Martha Jones and Hannah Pfeiffer. Also shout out to Noelle King for the extra eyes. I'm your host, Jonqueline Hill, and fingers crossed I still have a voice after this concert. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye!