The people who agreed with the column are very vocal in expressing that. I mean, I would say that the reaction is as polarizing as the hat is. MARTIN: So tell me a little bit more about what reaction you're getting to the column. And so you can't wear something like a Confederate flag or wave a Confederate flag and say that it only represents this tiny sliver of history when, in fact, there is this really broad history, the bulk of which is pretty negative, at least for a pretty large group of people of color, that, you know - you have to recognize that that is part of the story that you're telling.
#MAGA HAT RED BUTTON MEME FULL#
I mean, I think that if you are making this argument that it is purely a matter of celebrating history, then you have to I believe also recognize the full breadth of that history. And to that, would you say, are these people just not willing to be honest about what they're trying to say? It's not meant to be provocative or racist. Now, along those same lines, there are plenty of people who will say, no, it's not. MARTIN: I mean, you say that - in your column, you say that to wear a MAGA hat is to wrap oneself in a Confederate flag, which you also see as a provocation. MARTIN: Well, you draw the analogy to the Confederate flag. But the broader culture at large knows what it means, historically. I mean, you know, I think, you know, you can look back in - at much darker periods in history, you know? And there are those who might argue that, oh, I'm wearing this because I'm a history buff. GIVHAN: Sometimes not, sometimes it does. MARTIN: Is that symbolism, in your view, equally understood by those who wear it and by those who receive it or see it? But I do think that there's this sense that if you put on that hat, you are knowingly shrouding yourself in something that has all of these dark connotations and, in knowingly doing that, that implies that you're OK with it.
And I don't think most people presume that to be the case. And I don't necessarily think that is the case. And I think, you know, there is this notion that simply because you put on the hat means that, you know, you are all these terrible things. I mean, I do think it's different from those things because - the groups and attitudes and sensibilities and moods that it's associated with. MARTIN: Is it your contention that this is at a different level, it has some broader cultural meaning apart from the political figure itself?
Like, the Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster was a thing for a while. And even though Barack Obama wasn't really known for his fashion, I mean, there were symbols associated with him that people made into fashion. MARTIN: So political figures have used fashion to make statements before, like Hillary Clinton had the blue pantsuits that then became the white pantsuits because that's something that the suffragists wore. And things happened to make it less great. And it has come to represent, also, this idea of making America great again as in, oh, it once was great in some distant past. But I think what happened is that the hat was essentially kidnapped, weaponized by Charlottesville and by white supremacists and by the violence that went on in some of those rallies by a minority of people at those rallies.īut that hat came to I think, in the broader culture, start to represent a lot of really dark forces. And people who were wearing it I think were, at that point, focused on various policy ideas, whether it was tax cuts or a point of view when it comes to foreign policy or immigration. And then it came to represent, you know, the Trump administration, the Trump campaign. GIVHAN: Well, I mean, I think the MAGA hat, you know, did start out as a - you know, as sort of innocuous political swag. So, first of all, why do you say that? And what is that identity? You said that the Make America Great Again hat is not a statement of policy anymore. MARTIN: You wrote a whole column about the MAGA hat. And she's with us now in our studios in Washington, D.C. Why is the hat such a big deal? Washington Post fashion and culture critic Robin Givhan has been thinking about that. You know which one I'm talking about - the red Make America Great Again hat, the MAGA hat.