The bear did it. Bears always do it. They always win in the end. Which, incidentally, is why I’m skeptical polar bears are really at risk from the ice caps melting. I mean, don’t get me wrong. They’re going to have to adapt. But you think those adorable killers aren’t going to turn this on us? I’m buying the Kevlar swim trunks for when the rising seas bring these infuriated predators to my doorstep.
But I digress.
California, and its bear, won the State Flags That Don’t Glorify Slavery Bracket™. The competition was, at times, fierce, but California’s strength comes as no surprise. Again: Bears always win in the end. And that bear is cool as heck.
Here’s the trophy we will be mailing to the state of California (just kidding we’re only going to post it on our socials):
And here’s the final bracket:
Finally, The People’s Rankings. Often, The People’s Rankings are just a fun exercise designed to give credit to contestants who performed well but lost in early rounds due to a difficult opponent. In brackets we intend to do year-over-year, though (assuming college sports come back at some point in this blog’s lifetime, the current plan is to fill the months between college basketball ending and college football starting with brackets when things are back to normal), The People’s Rankings are going to serve as next year’s seedings. This was the case with the License Plate Bracket. It will also be the case with this bracket. And hopefully, Mississippi will have their new flag up in time for it to be a 45-flag bracket instead of a 44-flag bracket in 2021 (Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Arkansas are all also welcome, and if you belong to one of those states and want to be included, go lobby your state to change its flag to something non-glorifying-of-slavery).
If this is your first time encountering The People’s Rankings, here’s how The People’s Rankings work:
- Take the champion (in this case, California) and assign it a score of 100.
- For everything which lost to California, calculate its score using ‘Score = 100 – M,’ where M is the margin of defeat, in percentage points.
- For everything which lost to a thing which lost to California, calculate its score using ‘Score = Opponent’s Score – M/Opponent’s Score.’ Continue this for all the things until everything has a score.
Obviously, The People’s Rankings aren’t a perfect way to measure how these would stack up in a collective ranking. Votes are binary. They don’t account for enthusiasm. Still, it’s the best way we’ve found to give Alaska the credit it deserves after a tough draw.
Now. The People’s Rankings – State Flags That Don’t Glorify Slavery edition:
1. California (100.0)
2. Arizona (82.1)
3. Alaska (73.3)
4. South Carolina (71.2)
5. New Mexico (68.5)
6. Colorado (65.1)
7. Wyoming (64.0)
8. Montana (63.6)
9. Ohio (62.9)
10. Maryland (56.5)
11. Texas (50.8)
12. Rhode Island (47.4)
13. Louisiana (46.3)
14. Indiana (46.2)
T-15. Vermont (41.9)
T-15. Pennsylvania (41.9)
17. Iowa (41.7)
18. Hawaii (41.1)
19. Oklahoma (40.0)
20. Oregon (38.4)
21. South Dakota (38.1)
22. Illinois (37.6)
23. Minnesota (35.3)
24. Washington (35.0)
25. Nevada (34.6)
26. Michigan (33.7)
27. Wisconsin (30.4)
28. West Virginia (28.6)
29. New Hampshire (27.9)
30. Missouri (26.1)
31. New York (24.6)
32. Idaho (24.1)
33. Maine (23.4)
34. New Jersey (22.9)
35. North Carolina (22.01)
36. Connecticut (21.96)
37. Kansas (19.0)
38. North Dakota (18.1)
39. Delaware (15.6)
40. Nebraska (14.1)
41. Kentucky (11.0)
42. Utah (8.7)
43. Massachusetts (7.0)
44. Virginia (5.6)
Lastly, detailed Championship results:
California defeats Arizona, 33-23
Instagram: California 22, Arizona 18
Twitter: California 11, Arizona 4
Google Form: Arizona 1, California 0
Tennessee’s flag does not glorify slavery. East Tennessee had broadly Union sympathies during the Civil War, and while you would never guess that with the number of Slave Nation flags that fly on a daily basis, that doesn’t change the region’s history. It has nothing to do with the Confederate flag and shares only colors and stars with it.
Hey Jeremy, thanks for the comment. I do think Tennessee’s flag’s acceptability is something upon which reasonable people can disagree. Personally, the fact they replaced a perfectly good flag with it and did that in 1905, and given it shares the colors, stars, and that odd bar on the side with the Confederate battle flag, I think it’s a Confederate honorific. Again, though, I understand others disagree with that, and I do think it’s less of an honorific than Georgia’s, Alabama’s, Arkansas’s, and Florida’s all are. Here’s what I wrote about them all last summer, if you’re curious: https://thebarkingcrow.com/six-or-more-state-flags-still-honor-the-confederacy/