What do Pennsylvania, Illinois, Nebraska, Mississippi, Michigan, Utah, Minnesota, Maine, South Carolina and Massachusetts — states that span U.S. areas and the political divide — have in frequent?
All 10 have seen current makes an attempt to revamp their state flags.
In Mississippi, public stress led the state to desert their Confederate-themed flag. In Massachusetts, a fee recommended that the state develop a brand new seal and flag that will be extra “aspirational and inclusive of the varied views, histories, and experiences” of its residents. Minnesota’s flag, as soon as described as a “cluttered, genocidal mess,” featured the state seal — a white farmer working in a subject with a Native American on a horse within the background — surrounded by timber, a stream, stars, circles, significant dates and extra. The brand new blue and white flag is much simpler. It has a darkish blue part within the form of the state subsequent to a lightweight blue part representing the state’s many lakes; within the middle is a white star.
A few of these 10 flag redesign efforts have succeeded (Minnesota, Mississippi, Utah); some haven’t (Maine, Massachusetts); and others are ongoing. In states that adopted new flags, some residents and lawmakers have began campaigns to convey the outdated flag again. Residents in further states similar to Washington are pushing their lawmakers to hitch within the redesign sport, too.
You may assume People wouldn’t care a lot about what’s on their state flags. However finding out state identities has taught me that it doesn’t take a lot to stir individuals up in regards to the symbols that signify them. A mere point out of my analysis, or of flags which are SOBs (state “seals on bedsheets”), or of the curious undeniable fact that some individuals get tattoos of the form of their state, results in an outpouring of anecdotes, questions and confessions. As one social media account that promotes the brand new Utah flag as soon as posted: “No person cares about flags. Till they do. All people cares about flags.”
There’s something about states that tugs at individuals. The place we dwell or the place we had been born shapes how we see ourselves and others. It grounds us, makes us a part of a political group in methods we’re solely starting to know. As I’ve discovered, individuals’s psychological attachments to their states can promote unity, belief and civic engagement. And the truth that so many states are within the means of reevaluating their identities, because the flag redesigns point out, is not any coincidence.
A confluence of developments is making state politics and historical past, and their symbolic illustration, notably salient immediately. One is the general nationalization of politics, the rising alignment in how individuals vote throughout federal, state and native places of work, together with a higher deal with nationwide politics in native information. More and more, residents are contending with hot-button nationwide points — immigration, gun management, abortion, voting rights and extra — in state and native areas. And with rising political polarization in Congress, federal gridlock on these points appears to have enhanced states’ roles as websites of vibrant policymaking. In the meantime, rapidly changing demographics, together with actions for racial and historic justice, have introduced new views to established state imagery.
My analysis reveals {that a} majority of People — 58% — take into account their state to be very or considerably necessary to their id. That’s just like the significance individuals place on different politically related identities, similar to get together membership, race, financial class and faith. I’ve additionally discovered that state identities are usually not apolitical, nevertheless a lot we’d assume they might be primarily about enjoyable stuff like nature, meals, music and sports activities groups.
In actual fact, individuals are more likely to say that their state is a crucial a part of their id in the event that they align with the state’s partisan bent, pink or blue. And though political issues don’t emerge all that strongly when individuals are requested to clarify why they really feel linked to their state, they emerge fairly forcefully when individuals talk about what they need had been different there — from political management and tax charges to the price of dwelling and the ideological make-up of the citizens.
We nonetheless have lots to be taught in regards to the political penalties of individuals’s state identities. However students have already got discovered that strong state identities improve trust in authorities and enhance individuals’s willingness to share restricted assets with fellow state residents over others.
For instance, if you happen to determine strongly together with your state, it will possibly enhance your view of your governor, particularly if you happen to aren’t a member of their political get together. Individuals with high levels of state pride are additionally extra prone to help spending on healthcare, training, infrastructure and transportation. And they’re extra prepared to have interaction in native civic and political acts, similar to volunteering, attending a authorities assembly and contacting elected officers.
One necessary query to think about in future analysis pertains to ingroups and outgroups. Robust state identification doesn’t appear to be born out of resentment towards a transparent outgroup, which suggests it is likely to be much less prone to gas political conflicts than different group identities, similar to race, partisanship and the city/rural divide.
Probably the most salient outgroup for state ingroups will be the nationwide authorities, however it isn’t clear that this relationship is especially or uniformly adversarial. As legal scholar Jessica Bulman-Pozen explains, discovering reference to a state can function a proxy for nationwide id in a time when individuals really feel that authorities is deviating from their hopes for the nation.
A Washington Submit columnist displayed this sentiment after the 2024 election in an op-ed titled, “My Blue State Is My Country Now,” expressing her delight in New York’s skill to face for the values, rights and alternatives she feels all People deserve. In different ingroup/outgroup dynamics, individuals usually don’t see themselves as a part of each teams, however right here the creator claimed her New York and her American identities, permitting her to precise aspirations for each as an alternative of pitting them towards one another.
Is it attainable {that a} robust connection to at least one’s state might help overcome extra fraught divisions with out accentuating outgroup animosity? Might American federalism, which is so typically related to fragmentation and divergence, be a pressure that helps maintain individuals collectively in turbulent instances? As one state senator in Utah put it when he was requested if remaking the flag was the most effective use of presidency time: “Whenever you join the values [we hold] with the symbols on the flag, we’re going to have a rallying level for your entire state. I’m actually wanting ahead to taking the id of what it means to be from Utah to the subsequent stage of one thing we are able to all unite behind.”
Deborah J. Schildkraut is a political science professor at Tufts College. This text was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Square.
