We’ve all done it.
We all have the memory of that moment when we realized that some innocent action, word, or choice of clothing, although meaningless to us, had a meaning to others and that sometimes those meanings were hurtful. We didn’t know it offended anyone until we were told, and we usually agreed not to repeat the offense.
That’s how we learned not to wear green socks to school on Thursdays.
When I was growing up, part of my mother’s laundry routine was something most adults do. She had one particular piece of clothing that, when she reached in the closet for it, signaled that the need to do laundry was serious. This was back in the ancient times before affordable clothes dryers so, since the laundry had to be hung out to dry, a string of rainy or snowy days could delay the normal laundry schedule. That piece of clothing was important. It was the point of no return.
While for some it might be that pink pair of underwear, a casualty of some red thing sneaking in with the whites, for my mother for a time it was my brother’s red, button down collar, dress shirt. If he went to school wearing that, laundry just had to be done.
This was in the stone-age when the 1950s were becoming the 1960s, and on the day that Nikita Krushchev, the leader of Red, Godless, Communist Russia, came to the United States to speak at the United Nations, where this cold war enemy would stand at the podium on neutral territory within the borders of the United States and declare he would bury us while banging the podium with his shoe, my mother had reached the signal that doing the laundry could not be put off, and my brother had gone to school wearing a long sleeve, what could have been seen by people as pro-Russia, very red dress shirt.
This was in the days when the FBI still did background checks on ordinary citizens who might have Communist leanings, so when my mother’s bad timing was explained to her, while she had the opportunity to explain things, my mother retired that shirt.
Things like this happen to all of us in one form or another. Usually we make the mature decision not to repeat the inadvertent offense even though it may have no such meaning to ourselves, and we move on. We show respect for the feelings of others.
What would be off track would be our defending some right to continue to repeat the offense even after we learn it causes offense when we were not aware of that initially. We would be defending our assumed right to offend people with impunity.
Some would call this just being cantankerous and by others just plain stupid.
It is all about a red tie.
At first glance it is just a red tie with widely spaced blue bands at a slant across the red with white stars on them. The sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts, Thomas Hodgson, bought the tie back in 2003. He liked a picture of himself wearing that tie so much, it became the picture on the home page of the Sheriff office’s website accompanied by a message saying that the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office is contributing “to the betterment of our country”, and a framed copy of it has been hanging in the entry lobby at the Dartmouth House of Corrections.
No one really looks closely at the pictures of people they walk by in hallways and lobbies, so it only attracted attention recently when someone discovered that the tie in both pictures is sold by a number of vendors along with flags, mugs, and belt buckles with some iteration of the confederate flag on them and that 17 year old tie in the 17 year old picture is described as an “anglo-Confederate society tie”, and that, while today it can be bought on the internet, back in 2003 it could be bought through an advertisement in a magazine or a catalog, a factoid that would make one wonder what type of magazine the sheriff was reading when he saw the ad, or what catalogs he regularly receive.
Even if it was just a happenstance reading of an outdated magazine in a dentist’s waiting room, the sheriff had to have read the description, “anglo-Confederate society tie”.
When questioned about the tie, the sheriff denied that any white supremacist, confederate message was being sent by it because he had seen the red of the tie, the blue of the band, and the white of the stars and the borders on the blue bands as the colors of the American flag stating that the design “represents what it means to be American.
The initial response might be to give him the benefit of doubt, perhaps he just didn’t know, and did buy the tie because of the patriotic motif, but, now that he has been shown the internet ad for the tie, and has been informed that the tie is worn by people affiliated with the broader neo-Confederate movement, the most obvious next steps would be to acknowledge that he just didn’t realize this before, even if he is lying about that, retire the tie, and take down the picture, realizing the affect of the tie, and its not being a matter of life or death, he would execute some good public relations by telling the public it was an “oopsie” not to be repeated.
Not this sheriff.
Instead of acknowledging a fashion faux pas as a mistake done back when people weren’t as “woke” as now, the sheriff doubled down on his defense of the tie by stating
“I wore the tie in this 17-year-old photo because it had patriotic colors (red, white and blue), and not because it ‘resembled’ some fringe neo-anglo-confederate-whatever group from hundreds of years ago that I’d never heard of until yesterday.”
Okay, that was then. This is now.
We grow.
First, the war to keep slavery wasn’t “hundreds of years ago”, and in recent years the use of the Confederate Battle flag has the very meaning of representing fringe neo-anglo-confederate-whatever groups, he knows that, and even if he only heard about this aspect of the tie yesterday, he admitted learning about it, so his taking appropriate action is not too extreme of an expectation.
Obviously, he knows how people see that tie, but when asked if he would keep wearing the tie knowing now how the design may be construed, Hodgson admitted he would because
“It represents the colors of a country that’s given me the opportunity to serve.”
So now, by his own actions and words, what Thomas Hodgson once wore innocently and can be easily put away, it is a 17 year old tie after all, knowing what he knows now, he will wear to consciously give offense.
So, if it had ever really been so, the colors of the United States that he wore for patriotism will now be worn to offend minorities as he has seen that the tie is not based on the flag of the United States of America, but proudly claimed to be designed after the flag of those who waged war against it to keep people enslaved.
The sheriff denies, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that he has no connection to white supremacist groups. He can take a step forward in proving that by putting away the tie and removing the pictures with him wearing it because it offends non-white residents of the county, or he can continue to wear it with the people of Bristol County knowing full well why.
The proof that the tie has more meaning than just a fashion choice is the vehemence with which it is being defended.
This is not a time for petulance.