Has the blue line on the American flag always been a white supremacy signal?

What are you referring to? Do you have a photo?

For R1, whose google apparently broke.

The thin blue line flag supports law enforcement. I've not seen it as a white supremacy thing but it does also coincide with people who have Don't Tread on Me flags, etc which usually means Tea Party or Rethug.

Depends on what percentage of cops are white supremacists.

(I'm guessing that percentage is absurdly high)

I think the blue line is racist. In an era in which police violence against African Americans is being examined and critiqued, to put a blue line on the flag is to come down on the side of police violence.

And by the way, I say that as someone who doesn’t necessarily see the police acting with more violence toward blacks than other people. In 2020, 13% of the people killed in the USA by police were black, which correlates almost exactly to the African American percentage of the population.

I see the police as acting with reckless violence toward EVERYONE.

It's the Back the Blue flag that became popular after the terror attack in Dallas in 2016. I'm not aware of white supremacists using it, they tend not to like law enforcement. Unless OP labels all opposing opinions and beliefs to his as white supremacists, in which case that's the eye of the beholder.

[quote] And by the way, I say that as someone who doesn’t necessarily see the police acting with more violence toward blacks than other people. In 2020, 13% of the people killed in the USA by police were black, which correlates almost exactly to the African American percentage of the population.

Statistics aren't as simple as that.

You can't just claim basically "Since 13% is the same for both, it's normal" because the percentage that interfaces with the police is not the same as "all Americans." Also, the end point, "killed," is a very small subset of those who were shot at or were brutalized by.

We also know, from a recent NY Times expose, that coroners all around the country cover for their police departments constantly. They often cover up police-caused deaths by claiming otherwise.

R6, the murders had nothing to do with the BLM. They were conflated (on purpose) because the people who did the killings were black.

While police may have used it initially to be against all police killings, it quickly became the symbol against BLM. There were claiming that these police shootings of black people were justified because otherwise they'd be killed.

And yes, white supremacists everywhere now have these stickers and flags on their trucks.

Ironically, at the June 6 insurrection, the group was chanting "Fuck the Blue" when the police were inconveniently blocking them

R8 Whatever, kook. I answered the question.

[quote] I'm not aware of white supremacists using it, they tend not to like law enforcement.

they hate blacks more

The first time I saw it was on the FB page of a friend of mine who is an American of Afro-Cuban descent.

Yes, it has been adopted by the white supremacists. One neighbor replaced his confederate with it. Another added it to his confederate, don’t tread, and Trump flags.

R11 A white-supremacist of color! Traitor. The most insidious kind of racist.

The red, white and blue was a riff off of the Union Jack when the flag was originally created. France is red, white and blue as well. I don't think Betsy Ross or the Founding Fathers-adjacent were invoking the police when designing the flag.

No.

The blue line is associated with Blue Lives Matter which is a direct response to Black Lives Matter. Yes, people claim it's not racist and it's just for supporting the police, but it has definitely been co-opted by white supremacists condemning Black Lives Matter.

Everyone hates BLM.

[quote] You can't just claim basically "Since 13% is the same for both, it's normal" because the percentage that interfaces with the police is not the same as "all Americans." Also, the end point, "killed," is a very small subset of those who were shot at or were brutalized by.

First of all, I didn’t say it was “normal.” I actually said it was the opposite. Police shootings in this country are a plague.

What I said is, the percentage of black people being killed by police is the same as the percentage of black people in the country, which proves the assertion that the police are killing more black people to be incorrect.

I think your comment about people “interfacing” is vague at best. What are you talking about?

And if you claim that more black people are being shot than their population percentage, but only the same percentage are *dying* as a result, well, that’s a very odd claim indeed. What is the support for that?

Yes OP. Those hideous flags popped up as a direct response to Black Lives Matter and the police reform movement. They are for people who are against police reform because they don't believe police misconduct is real (certified idiots) or they approve of the misconduct (racists). This has been obvious to me since the very beginning and I wish more people talked about it.

Tl;DR Blue Lives Matter is a movement for the very stupid and the very mean.

I lost interest in all the videos of black people being killed by police, when I realized that the only videos being released and going viral were of black people disobeying the police and acting irrationally and sometimes violently. That seemed like an agenda to me.

I'll start paying attention again when there are viral videos of either white or Asianpeople being killed by cops, or nerdy, skinny black people following police instructions to the letter, but still getting killed regardless.

R20 people don't deserve to die because they disobeyed an authority figure. That kind of bootlicking mindset lets the cops off the hook when so much of their behavior is sadistic and wrong. BTW Lindsay Graham said the exact same thing when Jacob Blake was shot 8 times in the back for walking about from that cop. People like you disgust me.

Justice depends on proportionality and equal treatment under the law, R20. This is not a radical theory.

Didn't the blue line flag become popular when there was a rash of police killed? The flag was in support of police, and if I remember correctly, it wasn't specifically meant to be anti-BLM.

It was after the Dallas Police massacre in 2016. A mentally ill young man gunned down a bunch of DART officers (these would be the people who deal with buses and trains) who were providing security for a Black Lives Matter march. If I recall he wounded black officers.

Do not resist arrest. Keep your hands on the wheel. No sudden moves. Do not run away. Don’t reach for the cops gun. It doesn’t matter what race you are.

[quote]Do not resist arrest. Keep your hands on the wheel. No sudden moves. Do not run away. Don’t reach for the cops gun. It doesn’t matter what race you are.

And yet black people still get shot. Funny how that works.

Well, I do know cops went black and blue when that "Blue Lives Matter" crowd used those very flags --when they were attached to poles-- to beat the shit out of them on 1/6.

To answer OP’s question: No. I’ve known plenty of black cops and relatives of black cops, as well as non-racist whites who used to rock the thin blue line. The past few years have blurred a lot of lines, but I really don’t think we’re at a place where anything other than certified symbols of hate can be used to identify racists.

OP is Canadian.

[quote]The past few years have blurred a lot of lines, but I really don’t think we’re at a place where anything other than certified symbols of hate can be used to identify racists.

So proud boys beating the shit out of cops with "thin blue line" flags - does that count as certified racist behavior? Or just plain old garden variety fascism?

Is there a central organization that certifies racist symbols for the general public?

And whether it's a racist symbol wasn't the question - whether it's a symbol of white supremacy, which is a rather different beast than plain old racism.