It was shortly after the pandemic commotion started to die down that I first noticed a new flag on my high school campus. It was the familiar rainbow with something additional — a triangle of white, pink, blue, brown, and black. I didn’t really like it. I mean, eleven different colors? You’d need more than a standard Crayola box to draw the Progress Pride flag.
Pride flags are numerous and, at times, complicated, with variations for specific gender and sexuality identities. These specific flags and color combinations can be a great way to claim your identity and to find others who might share your experience. Personally, I’ve found great joy in hanging an ace pride flag in my room, even if I’m one of the only people who ever see it. There’s great joy in pride flags, no matter the orientation.
But the weakness of hyper-specific pride flags is the same as the weakness of trying to make LGBTQIA2S+ a standard acronym — for people who don’t have a deep emotional connection to or passion for the queer community, it’s overwhelming to look at all those letters and begin to parse them.
The original pride flag, created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker at the request of gay activist Harvey Milk, had eight colors, each with a different meaning. The flag that persisted after Milk’s assassination is the flag most people are familiar with — six colors, a classic rainbow. It’s a symbol of pride that’s persisted for over 40 years and a color scheme that queer people can easily incorporate into their art. Most importantly, I think, it’s simple, easy to mimic, and recognizable even as a motif.
In 2017, The Philadelphia City Council commissioned a new pride flag with an additional brown and black stripe to represent communities of color. The next year, Daniel Quaser designed the “Progress Pride flag,” which included the colors of the trans flag and used the black stripe to acknowledge those lost during the HIV/AIDS crisis.
These changes were meant to highlight the often-overlooked contributions of queer people of color and trans people to the queer movement. Especially in the wake of 2020, people across the country were looking for ways to re-evaluate their perspectives on history. That’s important. As a queer Black woman, I was glad to see the renewed attention, even though I had a sneaking feeling things weren’t going to last very long.
There are a lot of ways that the queer community can be (and has been) exclusionary or problematic (just as any group of people can do the wrong thing). It’s important to acknowledge problematic history. It’s important to increase the visibility of people of color and trans people. Still, I don’t think making the “Progress flag” the new default is the best way to do that.
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a trend — especially among accomplished Black individuals — of trying to stop emphasizing the Black part of the narrative.
I have one artistic issue with the flag and one cultural issue. The artistic issue is pretty simple: it’s a complicated flag. Part of the beauty of the classic six-color rainbow is that it can be created with any standard pack of colored pencils or crayons. That means that queer youth who are prone to doodling can easily sketch the flag in the margins of a notebook or incorporate the colors into a larger project. With the additional triangle, all of a sudden a simple striped design becomes something that requires just a bit more attention to create.
It may seem minor, but I have many queer friends that enjoy casually incorporating a rainbow into their artwork. It’s simple, and rainbows are fun. No one’s thrown out the standard rainbow as a symbol, but I can’t help but wonder if the increased presence of the progressive pride flag means there are queer youth growing up feeling like that’s the default and a simple rainbow is somehow lacking.
The other issue I have is more cultural. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a trend — especially among accomplished Black individuals — of trying to stop emphasizing the Black part of the narrative. From Dr. King’s famous speech including wanting to highlight the “content of character” over the color of skin to Beyoncé hoping that race and genres of music will one day be irrelevant, there’s a long history of Black people wanting to push for inclusion to be so natural that it’s not a special thing.
Symbols are important, but I think more important than the number of stripes on a Pride flag is continuing to push for educational and systemic changes to create more welcoming communities.
Including the Black and brown stripes on the pride flag makes being a queer person of color feel like a special thing. It excludes East Asian queer people, who may not fit into the Black and brown boxes. Instead of saying, “Hey, you’re welcome in this community no matter who you are,” this special flag feels like it’s saying too much. Like it’s going, “Hey, we noticed that you’re a different kind of different, and we have a poor history dealing with people who are too different, but we’re trying to be better. So, here, have this flag as a consolation prize.”
Symbols are important, but I think more important than the number of stripes on a pride flag is continuing to push for educational and systemic changes to create more welcoming communities. I have nothing against someone preferring the new pride flags if that’s what makes them feel more welcome, but I also think calling out the difference continues to push “defaults” (like white and cis) that make everything else seem like a variation on a “normal” setting — and there’s enough variation in the human species that I’m not quite sure anything should be called “normal” anymore.
This Pride Month, I’d encourage you to continue the work of queer theorists and try breaking down your expectations about the default. Learn more about pride flags and queer history, because there’s a lot of it, and a whole lot of folks, that get overlooked.