Why the Confederate/Obama symbolism?

Posted by admin on 2008 October 21

I first got the idea for this site after reading an article about Rednecks for Obama, to which I have a link over there on the right. It seemed like good fodder for t-shirt sales, so I looked around in the usual places, didn’t see anything I liked, and decided to do it myself.

First I did the US flag designs, and then thought it would be cool to combine the Obama “O” symbol with “Rednecks for Obama”. And then it struck me - the “O” symbol with the Confederate flag! Subversive, absurd, controversial, aka destined to become a huge seller! Well, so far I’m breaking even, and there are only two weeks left.

After pondering on it for a while, the juxtaposition of the two seemingly incommensurable symbols began to strike me as the symbol in its own right of a deep reconciliation, of a long sought acceptance, a coming together, and possibly even a redemption.

I’ve never been a big fan of the cultural arguments in favor of the Confederate flag, those seemed like convenient rationalization to me. But then I heard a story on NPR last year, or the year before last, where they examined the cultural aspects of the Stars and Bars as a follow up to a story about the Mississippi state flag.

As near as I can recall, t was about a young black man from Mississippi who had landed some high powered analyst job in Washington, D.C. I think the gist of it was that he got tired of the constant insinuations about the backwardness of his home state, so he went out and bought himself a pickup truck and put one of those full-size, see-through Confederate flag decals in the rear window, maybe even put a gun rack back there. His point was - he was proud of where he came from, and proud of his Southern roots, and chose to turn the tables on this venerated and maligned symbol of the Old South, and renew it as a symbol of Southernness pure and simple.

So, considering all that, I figured it was okay for me to peddle my designs both with the US flag and with the Confederate one.