Yesterday an impressive number of large retailers announced they were pulling all Confederate Flag merchandise from their shelves and websites. Everyone from Amazon and Walmart to Etsy and eBay cleaned up house, but while the rebel flags are being pulled, their sales are also skyrocketing. As CNN notes, "three versions of the flag were up 1,670 percent to 2,305 percent over a period of 24 hours, according to Amazon data." Makes sense, even if it is so disheartening — once you take something away, people just want it more.Â
I was curious, though, if either of these trends have drizzled down to smaller shops, shops that don't necessarily have to answer to the entire country. Would, say, the local tourist stores here in Nashville, the same shops that have (tragically) carried Confederate Flag merchandise for years, follow Sears and Kmart? Laura Hutson and I went down to Broadway and stopped in at Dixieland Delights, Cotton Eyed Joe and Legends at Fifth and Broadway, three shops where I've seen plenty of Confederate Flag merch in the past.Â
As (mostly) expected, we saw plenty of flag-covered merch still available for sale (see above, and look after the jump for several more examples).
The employee at Legends declined to speak to us on the record, but staffers from both Dixieland Delights and Cotton Eyed Joe told us there hasn't been a change in sales nor have there been any complaints. (Surprising given that Amazon saw such an incredible increase — I thought for sure they'd at least see a noticeable bump.) And according to the employees we spoke with, there has been no talk about removing any of the merchandise either.
One woman at Dixieland said "To be honest, that's a Southern thing so when people come to Nashville you know they're looking for stuff like that. Sales are pretty consistent. We've always had the shirt and the shot glasses and stuff like that — I don't think they're talking about pulling it. That's what you see when you come to the South. It's part of the history, you can't forget it."Â
While that's true, as a citizen of Nashville, I'm also so embarrassed by that fact. I cringe at the thought of someone coming to our city, stocking up on Nashville and Tennessee-inscribed Confederate Flag merch and wearing it or displaying it back in their hometown, giving outsiders the impression that this flag is something Nashville is proud of. Some guy here on a business trip might buy a deck of Confederate flag playing cards or that "cool" wolf/flag ashtray for his buddy back home, as a goof, and while it might seem harmless, that silly gift further supports the stereotype that everyone in the South is too dumb to know what the flag stands for or too racist to care. That's not the Nashville I know, of course, and I'm guessing that's true for many of you, too. But after spending just 10 minutes on Broadway, it's heartbreakingly obvious to see why Nashville, and the South as a whole, are lumped together as part of the problem.Â
When I first moved to town over a year ago (from Seattle, and I'd visited Nashville a dozen times before moving) I remember posting this image on Instagram, out of bewilderment. This was what my new home was all about? A t-shirt with a Confederate flag in the shape a woman waiting to take it up the ass? What the fuck did I just do? Of course the longer I lived here I knew this shit in the tourist shops wasn't a fair representation of Nashville, or even the South, but it's always bothered me that so much Confederate flag merch has been so prevalent in the part of town that draws the most tourism. It doesn't seem to bother most people who live here, but I think it's because they're used to it. It's not that the average Nashvillian is all for flying the rebel flag, they just never considered saying otherwise. But imagine how it looks to the rest of the nation, the rest of the world. Imagine how the person of color who's visiting Nashville, finding it friendly and full of good food and kind people, feels when they stop in to get a postcard to send home and they're surrounded by knick-knacks that are covered in an icon that represents a white man's right to own slaves. It's bullshit, Nashville. And we shouldn't be quiet about it.
And while I don't necessarily agree that banning the flag or the merchandise would be helpful (that'd likely backfire), I'd love to see the citizens of Nashville, Mayor Dean and Governor Haslam (who already supported the removal of the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust from the Capitol and the discontinuation of the Confederate flag on specialty Tennessee license plates) encourage these retailers to reconsider the kinds of items they offer as a representation of our city and their state. Because this stuff ... the flags, the shot glasses, the bikinis, the weird polyresin statues of hound dogs holding guns (dogs don't even have thumbs, what can they do with that gun?)... this isn't the Nashville we should be trying to show off to the rest of the country, this is the part of Nashville we should box up and hide in the back storage closet.
