In an era where the lines between heritage and hate are increasingly weaponized, the U.S. Department of Labor took a very wild, very public stance on Jan. 7, 2026.
Posting on the agency’s official Twitter/ X, the Department of Labor shared a reimagined version of the “Stars and Bars”—the first national flag of the Confederacy—along with the caption, “Patriotism will Prevail. America First. Always.”
Unlike previous instances of social media gaffes that are quickly scrubbed from the digital record, the post remains active. Its continued presence on a federal platform is a very jarring reminder of why we mustn’t whitewash American history—specifically Black American history.
It is not a luxury, but a necessity for our survival and the progression of this nation as a democracy.
The Department of Labor’s purposeful use of such imagery is a masterclass in the “coded” language of American white supremacy.
The “Stars and Bars” may look like harmless vintage Americana. Still, for those who understand the history of Black Americans, these symbols are inextricably linked to a legacy of state-sanctioned work, pain and suffering.
Consider actual American history.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade- a brutal, centuries-long system (c. 1500s-1800s) where Europeans forcibly transported over 12.5 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas for labor, primarily on sugar plantations, resulting in immense suffering, death during the horrific “Middle Passage,” profound devastation in Africa, and the creation of lasting racial hierarchies in the Americas. Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, and the Netherlands were major players, buying captives from African middlemen, who were sometimes armed with European weapons, leading to devastating regional conflicts.
The American South was also often a euphemism for the public spectacle of Black men and free labor.
Black men were disproportionately forced into free labor systems like convict leasing and chain gangs in the post-Civil War South, functioning as a system
of racialized slavery under the guise of criminal justice, where they were compelled to work for little or no pay for state projects and private companies, perpetuating bondage long after official slavery ended.This practice exploited minor offenses to re-enslave Black Americans, providing cheap labor for economic development through forced labor, often with brutal conditions.
When a government agency uses its platform to pair Confederate symbols with the word “Patriotism,” it intentionally ignores these coded atrocities. It attempts to sanitize a regime that was built on the literal ownership and destruction of Black bodies.
A widespread lack of understanding of Confederate iconography fuels the relative silence surrounding this post. Many folks mistakenly believe the “Southern Cross” battle flag was the original symbol of the Confederacy. In reality, the “Stars and Bars” was the First National Flag, adopted in March 1861 and used until 1863.
By utilizing the “Stars and Bars,” the Department of Labor is not just posting an “old flag”; it is posting the symbol of a government that explicitly declared its independence to preserve the institution of slavery.
The most polarizing element of the incendiary-ass Jan. 7 post is the lack of institutional pushback or coverage– one day after the five-year anniversary of the wildest domestic insurrection in modern history.
While citizens have raised the alarm, the broader political discourse and American media have largely ignored the implications of a federal department promoting secessionist and flat-out racist imagery.
We cannot afford to ignore the reality that the “America First” movement is being visually aligned with a flag that represents the attempt to end the American experiment.
As long as we allow these symbols to be rebranded as “patriotism,” we participate in the erasure of Black history and the normalization of the atrocities that history contains.
The Department of Labor’s post is a symptom of a nation that refuses to look in the mirror.
Until we return to teaching the truth about this country’s history and other egregious elements of “forgotten” pasts and the true intent behind the “Stars and Bars,” our understanding of patriotism will remain as fractured as the history we are trying to hide.RELATED CONTENT: From Slavery To Liberation: The Diasporic Legacy Of Black Breastfeeding