2021

Images of Racial Reckoning in America

"The Back the Blue flag that has become highly visible this year has its origins in the white resistance to the 2014-16 Black Lives Matter movement and the slogan that resistance generated: “Blue Lives Matter.” It reproduces the US flag in black and white with one blue line across it. For its designer Andrew Jacob, the black space below the blue represents “criminals.” That is to say, it spatializes in visual form the “color line” between Black and white that W. E. B. Du Bois identified as the great American “problem” and claims that “blue” is what prevents chaos. Above the line is now the white-to-blue space. As a segregationist emblem, Back the Blue has become the flag of the imaginary neo-Confederacy, a gated community with aspirations to become a nation." Nick Mirzoeff