The need to be offended

I must be hopelessly insensitive, as clueless as I am undeservingly comfortable to be a privileged member of American society. I need to look at things in a new way — the way Supreme Court justices look at the Constitution, for instance, discovering things in it that linger for centuries hidden from plain view.
But I need help.
Perhaps I need to listen to people like Judith Harrington, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, who, in considering the recent July 4th holiday, favored us with the news that the Minnesota state flag is racist.
Well, why not? Just about everything in American culture is racist these days, if you ask the right people. And if you really want to know what’s racist, what better place to go than to an American university?
Now, I admit that upon reading Professor Harrington’s findings my first instinct was to question her status as an unbiased observer. I mean, she teaches in Wisconsin, and historically (especially during football season) The Badger State hasn’t always had Minnesota’s best interests at heart. But perhaps this was just my own bias showing. I must bury my Minnesota sensibilities in order to see the world as others see it.
Harrington says the Minnesota flag creates a racist contrast between white society and the American Indian. So I looked at the flag once again, and sure enough, it depicts a white settler plowing a field in the foreground while an Indian rides a horse on the horizon.
“The contrast in the images of the figures is interesting,” Harrington writes. “The image of the pioneer, a peaceful man who has laid down his gun and is plowing his field, is juxtaposed with the image of the Indian, who may still want to fight (his spear is at the ready) but who seems to be riding away.”
The contrast, Harrington explains to us less intelligent Minnesotans, speaks of a white man who is a “doer” who is entitled to the land, contrasted with the Indian depicted as a “vacating tenant.” Worst of all, she says, is the depiction of a racist, stereotyped Indian, who wears “only a loin cloth and a feather.”
Wow. I’m sure you’re like me, and you’d rather not be associated with a racist state symbol. So I looked more closely at the flag. And yes, the Indian carries a spear. But another person might consider the spear to be symbolic of a proud Native American heritage. Regarding Harrington’s contention that the Indian may still want to fight, how does she know? Perhaps showing a spear in the figure’s hand is the artist’s way of celebrating that proud Indian heritage.
And let me say just one thing about the loin cloth reference: I looked closely at the depiction and could not make out a loin cloth no matter how hard I tried to see it. And are loin cloths racist, too?
Where one person might see racism, another might see an attempt to honor. For every person who believes the depiction of the American Indian on a state flag is racist, another believes it to be an expression of respect. Who is right?
I grant you: For many of us, it’s hard to tell. We live in a culture where Amazon.com is applauded for banning sales of the Confederate flag but continues to sell Nazi and communist paraphernalia. But why stop with the Confederate flag? Many of the same people who celebrate the banning of it now want the U.S. flag banned, too.
If you ask me (and I realize you probably aren’t), this flag issue seems just one more example of a growing American desire to manufacture offense. It seems everyone wants to be offended these days, and by being offended they hope to force a kind of political correctness on everybody else that forces them to think and behave a certain way. But, trust me, there is no constitutional right never to be offended (although I’m sure our Supreme Court might be able to find one somewhere).