Union Jack now a hate symbol, or just unlucky laundry

When a flag curls fear instead of pride, perhaps not the fabric that is worn out, but the culture around it, Vince Hooper.

Union Jack: Once upon a time, an empire, war, tea and a global symbol of early bad teeth. Now, apparently, it is so radioactive that even wearing it can trigger public health protocols.

A 12 -year -old girl in England last week isolation At the school – not for the vaping behind the science block, not to bring a banned peanut, but to wear a Union Jack dress on “Culture Day”.

This is true. A British child. Wearing the British flag. In England. On a specially determined day to celebrate the culture.

The school responded quickly and decisively by treating him as a potential contamination. Like an escaped ideology, he was quarantined at reception. After social media aggued, threats were inundated and panicked, the school closed early for holidays. He dreams of the Culture Day next year, wearing a gray overalls and sitting quietly sitting when your eyes are closed.

Naturally, this cultural nonsense echoed to Australia, where the same flag is hidden as a flesh with a protruding elementary on a badly arranged tiktok, and occupies the upper left corner of the same flag.

Some say this is a colonial remnant – the symbol of the pressure, an insult to modern identity. Others shake the head of our real history and see them to those who fight and die in Alibolu, Tobruk and Kokoda. But in the age of anger, nuance is now fugitive.

And thus, a growing choir requires us to redesign our flag in a way that reflects “today’s Australia :: multicultural, inclusive, ideally recycled. The old one is excluded from the indigenous Australians. A serious and important debate, but rarely a debate accompanied by serious or important solutions. If symbolism solved inequality, we’d have done it so far.

Let’s be open: Honor the domestic heritage is not optional, it is delayed. However, the removal of Union Jack will not reconcile the expropriation that lasted for two centuries, rather than correcting the Internet in rural WA.

We were told that the flag should be forward -looking representing a new, colonial identity. However, flags are not visual boards. They are heirlooms. Keeping things date, apologizing for this. Even stubborn lice. Especially stubborn lice.

But let’s work with logic. If Britain is so ashamed of their own flag, if children are isolated to wear it, what does Australia have the hope of keeping ours? If someone learns that a man was once used in a pub fight, should we cancel the Southern Cross as preventive?

And the real irony lies here. We are so desperate to demonstrate our inclusion that we are isolated people because they do not comply with their performance. Apparently, nothing says diversity like to exclude a girl because she wears the flag of her own country – celebrating the diversity in a day.

Perhaps it is time to publish every student with an unapproved wardrobe guide: Welcome to Culture Day! Please wear it like everyone else. We do not want to propose pride – Paradise forbidden. ‘

And when it comes to Australia, yes, now we have to make an honest speech about who we are. But if a flag is the most aggressive thing about modern Australia, then we’re going well. Or we are deceiving ourselves.

So maybe – only maybe – we must stop isolating school children for patriotic dresses, stop tearing the holes in our own history and ask a more important question: When are we allergic for the context?

Let’s stay calm and continue until then. Just don’t worry about school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac33IJagcke

Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline at the SP Jain Global Management School with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.

Support independent journalism subscribe to IA.