The Confederate Flag and Me

Perhaps it was a bad sign of things to come, a warning of sorts. It was Monday night and I was dancing, eating, and drinking the night away at a lavish (at least by American university standards) May Ball for my Cambridge college when my friends and I giggled our way to the photo booth. As we got ready to enter the photo booth, our friends in front of us were yelling about one of the background settings: a Confederate flag. I was so shocked by the presence of a symbol that had terrorised me in various ways throughout my life, that I grabbed the closest thing to a police officer’s hat, and tried to get one of my friends to wear it. I insisted that with me in the photo we could capture a good shot, but my attempts to reclaim the space were met with horror from her…