Minnesota panel chooses new state flag featuring North Star to replace old flag seen as racist
Minnesota’s new state flag should feature an eight-pointed North Star against a dark blue background shaped like the state, with a solid light blue field at the right, a special commission decided Tuesday as it picked a replacement for an older design that many Native Americans considered offensive.
The State Emblems Redesign Commission chose the final version on an 11-1 vote after finalizing a new state seal that depicts a loon, the state bird. Unless the Legislature rejects them, the new flag and seal will automatically become official April 1, 2024, when Minnesota observes Statehood Day.
The star echoes Minnesota’s state motto of “Star of the North.” The commission’s chairman, Luis Fitch, said that to him, the light blue represents the Mississippi River, “the most important river in the United States,” pointing to the North Star. But he acknowledged it could mean other things to other people. Symmetry and simplicity won out over other versions, including ones that included a green stripe for the state’s agricultural heritage.
I don't even know what Minnesota's flag looked like.
Uh, no one is going to miss that.
Don't worry, Republican legislators are already in frothing rage about the change. I'm sure it has nothing to do with them wanting to keep the problematic imagery in the current one of native Americans being driven off their land. /s
Also they're spreading some conspiracy theory the new flag is supposed to look like the flag of Somalia or something and that this is a prelude to Sharia law being imposed. I wish I was joking. Yeah, because it has blue colors and a star in it, it must be an homage to Somalia, couldn't have anything to do with being the "land of 10,000 lakes" and "the north star state." Or even the old flag, which get this, is blue with a big star in it.
I also liked the version with the stripes better, but this is very nice too, and anything is better than the atrocious current one. The new seal with the loon is very nice too.
Other states that just lazily slapped their seals on to a blue background take note and get to fixing them up please.
New seal:
Libtard snowflakes don't even know what a seal looks like. It sure ain't looks like a bird, I tell ya
But loons are half bird/half seal with bitchin' red eyes.
And these morons gave it white eyes. Will the insanity never cease?
I have fantastic news for you, looks like the one I posted was revised slightly before approval. It's got the red eye now!
I was 100% joking, but that’s hilarious that they changed it.
I agree it's much better this way. Laser loon lives on.
This looks so metal! It's perfect!
They changed the words too! Idk what they mean though, the old words or the new words
Old words are the state motto which is in French, star of the north. New words are the Dakota name for the Minnesota river, from which the state derives its name. Some controversy over which barely visible words to go with. Both seem fine to me, I just want that red loon eye.
As a Virginian, I take slight offfense at this! ^but ^yeah ^our ^flag ^is ^just ^the ^state ^seal ^^on ^^a ^^blue ^^background
Loonie flag?
Why are the using the same bird as the Canadian money?
Is Minnesota signaling they intend to join Canada?
I wish! It's the state bird though. It's been the unofficial seal and symbol for some time already. And with all the lakes there are tons of loons.
No that was the tricolor variation that preceded this final design, and it actually did look like a Somalia flag. I think this one will be pretty well liked by pretty much everyone. The only people who won't like it will instinctively not like it because of the taint of wokeness as a motive to change it. Whatever. But at the end of the day, it was a trash flag and everyone will ultimately agree that it's better now.
Ironically the changes brought it closer to the actual flag of Somalia which is just light blue with a star on it (the three stripes were from some provincial flag, obviously cherry picked out of the many different flags with green blue and white in them to try and rile people up). I don't care though I think it was a stupid argument anyways. I liked the look of the stripes better, but I like this one too. Just was very tired at seeing the very predictable rhetoric from the right in response to a positive change correcting an ugly poorly designed flag. Glad there's a new one now.
Racism aside, it's like an ugly Christmas sweater in flag form.
I love it when someone can verbalize my feelings perfectly.
I cant make out the racism. Is that supposed to be a slave? It looks like a taco bell employee the way hes dressed
Native American on horseback.
How is that racist? Native americans are a big part of the state's history
It's a depiction (celebratory?) of them being purposely driven away from the land. The Native American is fleeing.
Wow. I saw it as the two people sharing the land. I did not see it as fleeing. Still a terrible flag, and even more so if it can be interpreted so differently.
Honestly? Even if it was unequivocally that it would still be a problem. The whitewashing of using violence to drive people from their homes and then pretending that they came to an agreement to share the land is just gross.
What if i see the indian circiling in for the kill?
Are we still using that word or did we figure that part out already?
i went to elementry school on a reservation, indian reservation was the parlance of the time. Kinda stuck with me.
Maybe time to leave that in your past. Around these parts that's not a word folks are fond of.
I don't know where "around these parts" is for you but I've heard plenty of people refer to themselves as indian or American Indian instead of Native American in my lifetime. Really many people would prefer you use their actual tribe name over either one, but it's most often white people getting bent out of shape over using "indian" in my experience.
Or actual Indians, from India.
These parts are the highest indigenous population per capita in Canada and the home of the Metis nation. Maybe we're just less shitty than some other places but that's a nice thing to learn!
Many Native American people prefer the term "American Indians", to be fair. There is a bit of a split on which one is preferrable depending on who you ask. It varies from tribe to tribe, region to region, and with age differences.
Most Native people would just prefer to be called by their tribal affiliation over either of the terms, but accept them as our collective terms for them. Many don't care which one you use because it's wrong either way, really.
This is just from my experience talking with some people from different tribes in my area, and from seeing the question posted on forums before.
That's true. But I was thinking the motif might be from before all that.
There really isn't any "before all that" though. Especially that far west. Along the east coast there might have been a generation of "we just want to escape weligious pewsecution and gwow cown uwu 👉👈🥺" but the first permanent settlement in Minnesota was in 1852, 7 years after the phrase "manifest destiny" was coined. Minnesota was established during the era where the prevailing belief of white Americans was that God commanded them to take all of America for themselves and anyone who tried to stop them was to be destroyed.
Oh, shit. I don't have that detailed knowledge of US history. 1852. That's almost 100 years after its founding, right? I had no clue it took that long to spread west.
Just two friends hanging out with their spear and their rifle respectively at hand
The rifle is just chilling. The dude's plowing.
Well that, unfortunately i guess is also a part of their history
Yes, but a flag is not the place to tell history. It usually depicts your ideals.
If Germany had f.ex. a shattered David's Star on their flag, that would accurately depict history. But it would read as antagonism and a current stance on things. As if it was their goal to destroy Jewish people.
It has to do with the setting. It's not just a Native American riding away on horse back, but the fact that the settler is watching him with his rifle near by. It is like he is driving him away and claiming the land for his own.
You're overinterpreting things. And despite that, it's exactly what happened. Historical accuracy is not racism.
Historical accuracy is not racism. Choosing to identify yourself based on the racist actions in your history is.
To drive it to the extreme, it would be like saying that Germany depicting Jews being gassed on their new flag isn't racist, just historically accurate.
That is a terrible flag even without the racism. A good flag should be clearly identifiable as an emoji or at least a stamp.