A Marquette University professor said the American flag makes him “anxious” in a National Public Radio interview Wednesday.
Philosophy Professor Grant Silva told an interviewer with WUWM, an NPR affiliate station in Milwaukee, that he feels “anxious” when he sees an American flag.
In the interview, Silva described how “excessive imagery” of American flags is borderline “nationalism.”
“I also get a little bit anxious around the excessive imagery of the flag in part because in my experience, patriotism quickly slips into nationalism,” Silva said. “Especially the simplistic version of patriotism, the flag-waving, my country love it or leave it kind of attitude. That is just a hop, skip and a jump away from becoming nationalism.”
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Silva also said that the flag has several different meanings and can represent “exclusion” for some.
“As much as I would like to see the flag displayed in a proud manner, it all too quickly takes on the stakes that, as a non-white person, can mean a lot, right?” Silva said. “It can mean a sense of inclusion or exclusion. A sense of belonging or the ascription of perpetual foreigner, perpetual outsider status; that that flag is not for me unless I’m willing to abide by the assimilatory paradigm that some of these individuals that you’re talking about tend to put forward.”
Silva resonated with radio show host Teran Powell, who discussed her own anxiety “caused” by the national flag, telling the story of how she saw several American flags while traveling through Illinois and all she wanted to do was “hurry up and leave.”
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