Member-only story
Northern Ireland
In July and August 2005, I spent two weeks in Ireland. Most of it was with a tour group via a public radio station, before I stayed at a Dublin hostel for three days. This excerpt includes our brief first sight of Northern Ireland. Our visit to the Balleek pottery factory was later.
Enneskillen
We’re in Northern Ireland! Duck! Just kidding. [I guess my joke was about bombs flying at us?]
No wonder I saw a British flag on top of a tower down the highway; that sort of weirded me out. Dave didn’t announce that we’re in Northern Ireland (by the way) until after we’d passed that flag.
Back in an undergraduate creative nonfiction class, I read an essay about how the United States flag is a patriarchal symbol, I’ve had an aversion toward it. I understand what the essay claimed. It is indeed a symbol of white supremacist patriarchy. Seeing British flags in Ireland has a similar connotation, in that it means it’s an occupied country. It feels… imperialist and colonialist, even though Irish people generally have white privilege nowadays. Colonialism is colonialism. If it weren’t for this, Ireland would still be one country.
Now I know what a royalist flag looks like. It has a white background, red cross, a white star in the center with a red hand, a British crown above the star, and a small British flag in the upper right…