Tim Walz Did not Change Minnesota State Flag to Resemble Somali Nationwide Flag

On Aug. 6, 2024, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice-presidential working mate within the 2024 presidential election. As conservative pundits on X raced to critique Walz’s political report, one such criticism targeted round a slightly stunning matter: Minnesota’s state flag. 

In keeping with some posts, Walz modified the design of the Minnesota state flag in 2024 to at least one intently resembling the nationwide flag of Somalia, implying that he had turned Minnesota into some type of “New Somalia” and would do the identical to the nation if elected.

These claims are demonstrably false — Walz didn’t change the state flag of Minnesota to resemble that of Somalia. This is what truly occurred:

Minnesota’s old flag centered the state’s seal, which featured a white settler tilling land and an Indigenous man on horseback, on a blue background. Indigenous Minnesotans, together with Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, said the seal and the state flag had been insulting to their heritage and tried to erase the historic report of settler-inflicted violence towards Native American teams. In the meantime, others famous that the outdated flag broke a number of rules of “good flag design” as printed by the North American Vexillological Association.

So, in 2023, the Minnesota Legislature created a fee to revamp the state flag and seal. In keeping with Minnesota Public Radio, it took 10 makes an attempt within the Legislature to move a invoice calling for a brand new flag and a brand new seal. Walz signed that invoice into legislation, however that was the one half he performed in creating the brand new flag.

The fee obtained greater than 2,500 redesign proposals, each severe and unserious, earlier than selecting its prime six designs, then whittling the quantity down to 3, earlier than lastly deciding on a base design created by Andrew Prekker. 

Prekker’s design featured a 3 horizontal stripes of white, inexperienced and light-weight blue, with a navy blue stylized define of Minnesota’s form on the left facet of the flag and an eight-pointed star — a nod to the state’s motto, “L’étoile du Nord,” French for “The Star of the North” — centered within the define.

The fee modified Prekker’s design barely by simplifying the star and eradicating the horizontal stripes in favor of a discipline fully of sunshine blue, representing the water of the so-called “Land of 10,000 Lakes” and the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The fee launched a comprehensive report on the design that’s publicly obtainable, and the brand new flag was formally flown for the primary time on Could 11, 2024.

So the place does Somalia play into this? Minnesota is dwelling to greater than 60,000 Somali Americans, the most important such neighborhood within the nation. And certainly, each flags function a star and a light-weight blue discipline. However each flags facet by facet reveals that they don’t seem to be very comparable.

(Wikimedia Commons)

(Wikimedia Commons)

Somalia’s flag includes a white, five-pointed star (representing the 5 Somali homelands) within the middle of a light-weight blue background (impressed by the United Nations, which helped Somalia acquire independence), whereas Minnesota’s makes use of an eight-pointed star particularly over the simplified state define, which is in navy blue. 

Positive, we admit there are similarities. However the resemblance is only a coincidence, based on the fee’s rationalization of the symbols on the flag. The Dispatch, a web-based publication that overtly describes itself as conservative, spoke with a consultant from the Minnesota Historic Society, who confirmed that the similarities had been coincidental:

The brand new Minnesota flag was not designed based mostly on the Somali flag. The designer who submitted the design idea, who’s from Luverne, Minnesota, cited many symbols and references of Minnesota as his design inspiration. The Fee additional refined the design to characterize essential options of Minnesota together with the North Star, the form of the State of Minnesota, and blue representing the waters of Minnesota.

Lastly, it isn’t unusual for flags to look alike — generally a lot moreso than these of Minnesota and Somalia: Romania and Chad each use a tricolor design of vertical blue, yellow and purple bars, whereas Indonesia and Monaco’s flags each are horizontal stripes of purple on prime of white, for instance.

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