Distress Signal

The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
—U.S. Flag Code

IT SEEMS RATHER odd that a normal part of my catching-up-at-the-end-of-the-day conversation with my partner is discussing the whiplash of political events. Leaks are not conversations about the sink. Notes are not to be turned into the teacher. Tapes are not our latest vintage find. They are all political subjects and part of the ever-evolving new normal. And just as spring was forcing its way into bloom, it was announced that Officer Betty Shelby of the Tulsa (Okla.) Police Dept. was found not guilty of first- degree manslaughter in the shooting death of unarmed Terence Crutcher.

The new normal snapped back into a familiar story of an unarmed black person expected to do everything “right” at the risk of simply appearing to be a threat. Some things never change.

Which made me think of my Facebook profile picture. I haven’t changed it since December 2014.

It used to be a different angle of the photo you see at the end of my column—me wearing my signature red lipstick in beautiful, natural light. Something shifted in me that year as we met Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown in death and violence, and I changed my profile picture to a black and white depiction of the U.S. flag hanging upside down. I chose that image after a friend posted a similar image with the flag code explaining the symbolism, fully expecting to change it out for something more “me” after the holidays. And then there was Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and so many more. The upside-down flag stayed.

I became a U.S. citizen in January 2010 after decades of wrestling with the idea of belonging and what it meant to be an American. I immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. I was 8 months old. In fact, my parents called me in early May this year to remind me it was the day we had arrived in the U.S. I grew up identifying myself as a Korean American, even though the American part was not official until seven years ago. My father begged me to apply for citizenship after 9/11 because he understood things were shifting, but I waited. After Barack Obama won his first term as president, I realized that citizenship was a privilege and I wasn’t taking advantage of it. Becoming an American citizen, even if it wasn’t by birthright, meant I could vote.

I changed my profile picture because as an American who at some level has chosen allegiance and paid for the privilege, I wanted to show other Americans who know the power of symbolism, and Christians in particular, that I am utterly disgusted by a justice system that seems designed to arbitrarily define justice, and just as arbitrarily dispense it. I changed my profile picture because the flag is something we see daily—in front of fast food restaurants, at schools, and sometimes in our churches—but we rarely think about the code governing its display. I changed the picture because if your world doesn’t feel like it has been or is turning upside-down, maybe you aren’t watching carefully enough.

We are in a time of dire distress. The lives of our black brothers and sisters remain in extreme danger.