semiotics without a scorecard

[adrian_turtle]

I saw a recolored US flag this morning, and could not figure out what it meant. In these parlous times, when the "thin blue line" flag has so many variations, all offensive, my first suspicion was that it was something like that. That suspicion is strong enough that I'm not posting the picture to twitter or FB, lest I be thought to endorse it. (And I'm not posting it here, even among friends who know the difference between "WTF does this mean?" and "I endorse this symbol," because I don't know how to link to a picture on my phone.)

The stripes are red and black, and the stars are black on a green field. ("Green field" is useless for searching, because all kinds of flags fly over the kind of field with grass in it.) Unlike the African pride flag, there are no green stripes. Is it for patriotic anarchist environmentalists?

Comments

[anne]

I think that's an African American flag.

[adrian_turtle]

Thank you!

[redbird]

I think it's this African-American flag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Flag

[adrian_turtle]

Yes, that's it. I don't know if it helped that you did see the picture on my phone ;-)

[evalerie]

I had not seen this before. Interesting!

[adrian_turtle]

It was hanging from someone's porch, between here and Boston College. I'm still getting used to the neighborhood. Neighborhoods.

[elusiveat]

Interesting!

I had a different but related series of emotions when I was in Florida earlier this summer. I walked past a house with a mangled U.S. flag of some sort and kind of got on edge until I took a closer look and saw that it was one of these: http://www.signandflag.com/Florida-Gators-Flag-3X5-with-Stripes-p1117.html