There are some things we need to address before we unveil this bracket. We need to address why we decided to exclude the District of Columbia (not a state flag, but we’ll elaborate). We need to address how we assembled the bracket (series of random draws, but we’ll elaborate). We need to address which state flags we judged to glorify slavery.
We’ll start with the big one: The glorification of slavery. By our judgment, anything which honors the Confederacy glorifies slavery. The Confederacy came to be out of an effort to preserve the enslavement of Black Americans, and if you disagree, we encourage you to read the secession documents—here’s a link to five of them. Remembering it and honoring it are different things. Museums and history books are the place for remembering atrocities. Battlefields are a piece of history. State flags are the place for honoring states. Anything on a state flag is, in our view, honorific.
We went through the flags of the eleven Confederate states as well as those of Missouri and Kentucky, which were claimed by both sides during the Civil War. You can read our examinations here. As far as which ones honor the Confederacy, we drew the line between North Carolina and Tennessee, viewing each with suspicion but Tennessee as actively Confederate and North Carolina as possibly offensive to some, yet not exactly Confederate in nature.
Now, why we excluded D.C.: The District of Columbia has a great flag. If we were to do a bracket of city flags, it and Chicago might be the only two in the bracket (it’d be a great bracket—we might do this, depending how soon and in what form college sports return). D.C. is not a state, though. At least, not yet, and unlike with license plates, our arbitrary choice in this case fell on the side of exclusion rather than inclusion.
Finally, how we built the bracket.
I divided the flags into seven categories.
The first was Confederate-honoring flags. Again, here’s a link to those (plus the non-Confederate-honoring flags among states with Confederate ties).
The second was iconic state flags. These were flags that I could call to mind without seeing them. There are nine of them.
Arizona:
California:
Colorado:
Maryland:
New Mexico:
Ohio:
South Carolina:
Texas:
Wyoming:
The third was good state flags, flags that look good but maybe aren’t iconic. As an aside, I don’t know enough about Hawaiian history to adequately place Hawaii in these groups, and while I think it’s probably important that I learn about how that exact case of imperialism went down, and what the flag signifies regarding that imperialism, I have yet to do that, so I’m leaving Hawaii in this group and not giving it its own region. Three of these.
Alaska:
Rhode Island:
Hawaii:
We chose to construct the bracket into eleven regions, with each of the iconic state flags getting its own region, and Alaska and Rhode Island each getting their own as well, with Hawaii opposite Rhode Island. The nine iconic flags were randomly assigned to regions. After placing these twelve flags, though, I needed ten more to make sure there was at least something not-boring in each flag’s preliminary matchup. So, I constructed three more groups.
The fourth group was unintentionally funny state flags. There are three of these.
Michigan, which has a bigfoot-lookin’ guy in the middle:
New York, which has a smiley face sun in the middle:
Oregon, which has a gold beaver on the back, making it the only two-sided state flag:
I randomly assigned these to the next three spots in the bracket.
Next, state flags that have a cow on them. Again, three of these.
Delaware:
Kansas:
Vermont:
Randomly assigned these as well.
Finally, I chose four based on personal preferences and called them state flags – personal choice. Four of these.
Iowa, which I think my dad really likes:
Nevada, which has the phrase “Battle Born” on it, which The Killers used as the name of an album:
Utah, which has a beehive on it, aiding my campaign to get Weber State University to rebrand its athletic teams as the Beekeepers:
And Wisconsin, which has a badger on it (I like badgers because I read the Redwall books growing up):
After randomly assigning these to the final four spots without an opponent, I randomly assigned all the other state flags. Aside: Yes, there are some of these with problematic imagery as well in the eyes of some. We acknowledge that, but we did constrict this bracket to State Flags That Don’t Glorify Slavery, and these fit that definition in our judgment.
Connecticut:
Idaho:
Illinois:
Indiana:
Kentucky:
Louisiana:
Maine:
Massachusetts:
Minnesota:
Missouri:
Montana:
Nebraska:
New Hampshire:
New Jersey:
North Carolina:
North Dakota:
Oklahoma:
Pennsylvania:
South Dakota:
Virginia:
Washington:
West Virginia:
Here’s how the bracket turned out:
Tomorrow, we’ll start voting, with the “First Round,” which in this case is the preliminary matchups for the Maryland, Rhode Island, Ohio, Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska Regions. On Sunday, we’ll have the “Second Round,” consisting of preliminary matchups in the remaining regions as well as the regional finals from the six regions where we’ll have voted on Saturday.
Start thinking.
Image credits for all flags in this post can be found on this page.
