Planned Parenthood Makes America Great Again

They're red and white and debated all over.

The baseball game caps embroidered with the campaign slogan "Brand America Groovy Again" are synonymous with President Donald Trump'due south administration, and have become a hot-button topic, especially in the wake of a racially charged confrontation last week most Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Memorial.

Many, including actress and activist Alyssa Milano, at present are calling the baseball caps the modern-mean solar day white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan, representing a white nationalist ideology pushed by the president.

The collision involved a group of students from Covington Catholic Schoolhouse, an all-boys high school in Kentucky, who were wearing MAGA hats when they got into a confrontation with a Native American man from Michigan. The Native American elderberry, Nathan Phillips of Ypsilanti, said he was trying to defuse the tension betwixt the mostly white students and four members of the fringe religious group the Black Hebrew Israelites, who hurled insults at the students.

Videos of the incident posted to social media whipped up violent debate nearly who was right and who was wrong and the office the MAGA hats may accept played in the whole ordeal.

Information technology led some to ask: If the boys hadn't been wearing the MAGA hats, would the confrontation have escalated equally it did?

John Pavlovitz, an author, pastor, and activist from North Carolina, said the boys might not have fully understood the loaded pregnant those hats conduct for some people.

"To be nowadays at that gathering is one matter, simply to be present in those hats is a completely different argument," Pavlovitz said. "There'due south no sense of compassion in those hats to most people, and then that hat becomes a threat.

"They are no longer a neutral symbol. Whenever those hats are worn, they're going to make a argument that brings with it many assumptions — a resistance to diverseness, a resistance to equality. There's homophobia in the epitome of those hats that comes automatically when we see them.

"What nosotros see is that all the president'due south ideals are at present sort of wrapped up in that i habiliment symbol. No matter what one does, they have to sympathize that to historically repressed communities or vulnerable communities who now feel more nether duress when they see those images," said Pavlovitz, who has drawn millions of readers to his blog, "Stuff that Needs to be Said." His latest book, "Promise and Other Superpowers" ($20, Simon & Schuster), was published in November.

Rise of the red cap

The hats became a staple at Trump rallies and events during his 2016 presidential campaign; they're still sold online through the White House Gift Shop and on donaldjtrump.com, where the slogan "Make America Great Again" is printed on everything from baseball game caps to swimsuits, banners, playing cards, megaphones and fifty-fifty beer can koozies. Proceeds benefit his campaign.

The MAGA cap became so well known and synonymous with Trump's 2016 campaign that it was dubbed Symbol of the Year by affiliates of the Stanford Symbolic Systems Program, which according to its website, focuses on systems and symbols in advice.

A Stanford News Service story near the MAGA hat said it "divers a positional narrative: America was slap-up, is non whatsoever more, simply could be once again," and noted Ronald Reagan get-go used the "Make America Great Again" slogan during his 1980 entrada for president. Beak Clinton also used the phrase in 1991 in announcing his campaign for president.

Todd Davies, program acquaintance director, told the Stanford News Service, "Lots of things can exist symbols but relatively few things actually are. Existence a symbol is an acquired status that gets established through utilise. Symbols tin obviously become notable because the things they represent are notable."

Davies told the Free Press that what the MAGA hats represent has changed in the concluding three years.

"I exercise think the cultural significant of MAGA hats has evolved since 2016, and that many people (though not all) come across the lid at to the lowest degree partly as a symbol of white nationalism in the U.Due south.," he said in an electronic mail.

Related content at Freep.com:

Catholic student: Our group was not hateful in Washington D.C. incident

Native activist offers to meet Covington Cosmic students

Native American leader of Michigan: 'Mob mentality' in students was 'scary'

The Rev. Wendell Anthony, who is pastor of Detroit's Fellowship Chapel, a trustee on the national NAACP Lath of Directors, and president of the Detroit Co-operative of the NAACP, said the MAGA hats send a message that is unquestionably divisive for people of color.

"The caps that the young men were wearing, it is their correct, of course, to wear them, just when one says make America cracking again, what are you talking about?" he said. "When are you talking well-nigh, making America peachy over again? What period are you lot referencing?

"Because in club to make America great once again, 1 has to get backwards. You have to go dorsum to a time period in which America equally viewed through the prism of many people was not and then great. Are you talking about a period in which Native Americans were vanquish downwardly and tribes effectually this nation were demoralized and basically disrupted and destroyed?

"Are y'all talking nigh the antebellum period or even before that when blackness people were enslaved and subservient and had no rights that America was leap to respect?

"Are y'all talking about the period when the Japanese were put into internment camps?Are you lot talking about the civil rights menstruation in which Martin Luther Rex and Rosa Parks sat downwards and so we could stand up? What period are you talking about? It'due south confusing, and nosotros don't understand that."

The people who wear those hats, Anthony said, are suggesting — knowingly or unknowingly — that they support all of Trump's policies and his behaviors.

"Exercise you cover division?" Anthony asked, adding in office, "... in gild to clothing that hat, you can't just select a part of the man that hat has come to embody. You cannot compartmentalize yourself and say, 'I'm going to embrace the part of him that appears to be strong and tells people where to go off,' without embracing all the other hate and racism and division and derision, and the government shutdown that he proudly owns.

"When y'all wear that, you're proverb that's what you support. So when I see that hat, that's what I come across. I encounter America at its worst, I exercise not see America at its best."

The conservative view

Laura Ingraham called Milano "a dope" on her podcast Tuesday for characterizing the MAGA chapeau as the modern-mean solar day white KKK hood.

"Oh, OK sweetheart. … Does that hateful that we conservatives tin can say that a Planned Parenthood cap is basically … KKK? That would actually be closer to the truth, correct?" said Ingraham, who besides is a Play tricks News host.

"Planned Parenthood is boasting that they had 11,000 more abortions last year and, disproportionately, abortions affect the lives of minorities around the United States, who are, frankly, treated woefully by the Planned Parenthood machine." ... "That actually would exist more authentic that the Planned Parenthood cap might too be the KKK, merely not a kid who'due south wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat."

Former hush-hush service agent Dan Boningo, an author and frequent Pull a fast one on News commentator, agreed with Ingraham.

"That is the dumbest thing I take e'er heard in seven years of doing cable news that 'Make America Great Again' ― by the way, a slogan used by Bill Clinton at times, too ―  is racist? Are yous serious?" he said.

"Then Donald Trump ― who gives you back more of your coin, fought for schoolhouse choice, has black unemployment at the lowest in modern American history ― if he'south a racist, then he's the worst racist in American history."

Eric Castiglia, 49, a Republican from Sterling Heights, said Milano'south comments were terrible and that in no mode should the MAGA hats e'er be compared to KKK hoods.

"Absolutely not," said Castiglia, who is Catholic. "In that location are so many people in this country that wear that chapeau, that expect to it for inspiration for a fixing a broken organisation.

"It's not a white hat or a hood over somebody'southward face.That was the Democratic Party that had a historical connectedness to the KKK, never the Republican Political party affiliated with that grouping. We are the party of Lincoln."

Many on the left accept become then vicious, so song when it comes to the conservative viewpoint, Castiglia said, that it has stifled the voices of Trump supporters and Christians.

"You lot can't back up our president in public," Castiglia said. "People will chastise you, ridicule you and lump you into something that you're not simply because you believe in some of his policy problems."

As the parent of children who attend Cosmic schools, Castiglia explained that Catholic schoolchildren are taught not to talk back to adults, not to crusade a scene or exist ambitious.

"So they stood there smiling considering what else were they supposed to do?" Castiglia said. "They stood calm. They didn't do anything wrong. ... If that was my son, I would accept been proud of him that he didn't push the pulsate away, that he didn't say a nasty thing, that he just stood there, smiling. I would take been proud of him. They stood strong, peacefully, and they shouldn't have had to back down."

Still, Pavlovitz said it is possible the Covington boys didn't fully understand how politically charged the hats have become.

"Young people when they wear those hats, they might not be aware of how weighted they are," he said. "And so, for instance, these high school students might see it as an expression of solidarity with the president or some statement of pride in their land and be unaware of the legacy of hatred in our country, the legacy of white supremacy.

"And really, I retrieve that is a production of their privilege in this case. These are immature men who might exist largely unaware of the state'southward past and even of the president'southward policies, quite honestly."

A youth pastor for 23 years, Pavlovitz said what was about unsettling for him was seeing in the videos how poorly the chaperones handled the situation.

"Students must empathise the context of the world in which they're growing up in, and I think that'due south where you see a failure in this situation," he said.

"These adults understand exactly what that symbolism is and therefore, in a way, they are nearly weaponizing the young people in their care, they're almost using them to take a brunt of the message that they desire to perpetuate."

Trump weighs in on Covington

Although Trump hasn't commented on the shifting perceptions of what his scarlet MAGA hats have come to mean for many Americans, he said in a tweet that he supports the Covington Catholic School boys, and the 16-year-former inferior at the forefront of the controversy, Nicholas Sandmann.

He tweeted: "Looking similar Nick Sandman (sic) & Covington Cosmic students were treated unfairly with early judgements (sic) proving out to exist imitation — smeared past media. Not good, just making large comeback! 'New footage shows that media was wrong about teen's encounter with Native American' @TuckerCarlson"

White House press secretarial assistant Sarah Huckabee Sanders condemned the news media for its coverage of the confrontation, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity: "I've never seen people so happy to destroy a kid's life when that becomes the norm in the media in America simply because they're associated with this president. That is disgraceful and that should never have happened. Allow's hope that this is a lesson to all of the media, to anybody. Let's focus on getting things correct non getting them kickoff."

For his part in the standoff, Sandmann told NBC'southward "Today Evidence" on Wednesday that he did zero wrong.

"As far as standing there, I had every right to do and so. … My position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips," Sandmann told NBC'southward Savannah Guthrie. "I respect him. I'd like to talk to him. I mean, in retrospect, I wish we could accept walked away and avoided the whole affair, but I tin can't say that I'm sorry for listening to him and standing there."

Sandmann said he felt threatened during the confrontation, and said none of the students shouted "build the wall," threats or racial slurs.

"In hindsight, I wish we had only found another spot to wait for our buses, but at the fourth dimension being positive seemed improve than letting them slander us with all of these things. And so, I wish we could have walked away."

Phillips said he heard the students shouting "build the wall" as they chanted their school spirit songs. Video shows many of them waving their arms as if using tomahawks, which is considered derogatory. He as well told the Free Press he would similar to travel to northern Kentucky to talk to the students about cultural cribbing, racism and respecting various cultures.

The Rev. Anthony said if anything positive comes from this, it'southward that it's driving a national chat about an uncomfortable issue.

"People of expert will — black, white, carmine, yellow — have to take the balderdash by the horns. We take to seize upon the moment. We take to preach from our churches, our synagogues, our mosques, our temples.

"We have to say to each other that … we all accept a significant purpose hither and that we must respect our brothers and sisters for our differences because diversity is a good thing. …  Our nation'southward strength is in its diversity, not in its uniformity."

Anthony commended Phillips for offering to see with students from Covington Catholic.

"I retrieve that's powerful," he said.

When asked whether the MAGA hats take a role in America in 2019, Anthony said, simply: "I think the hat has a identify. The place for information technology is in a museum."

Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.

Tell us what you call up about the MAGA hats? Post your thoughts below and we will include a few reader comments in the Sunday Gratuitous Press.

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Source: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/01/24/maga-hats-racism-donald-trump/2659479002/

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