The stock show parade can do better
This isn't a rant about Confederate flags.
It's probably silly to get mad at any parade because parades are fundamentally silly things. You take your kids downtown to see some people on floats, or if it’s Fort Worth, you take them downtown to see some people on horses. It's all good fun.
Nevertheless, I found myself getting mad at the Stock Show and Rodeo’s All Western Parade this morning.
At first, I was mad because I saw a man carrying an armload of Confederate battle flags, presumably he was trying to give them away to parade-goers. (I didn’t see him actually accomplish this.) This is not a new phenomenon: Despite being banned from marching in the stock show parade since 2016, the Sons of Confederate Veterans — or men inspired by their example — are apparently still flitting around the margins.
The correct number of Confederate flags at any stock show event is of course zero, but I’ll give the parade organizers a little credit: Pushing racist Old South nostalgia and apologia from the center to the margins at least qualifies as progress. As recently as 2012, the stock show parade gave its Chairman’s Award to Fort Worth’s chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. So I think we can all agree that things are better now than they used to be.
That’s why this post is really about a different flag, one that was actually in the parade: the flag of the U.S. Border Patrol.
It’s no surprise that there were a lot of cops in the All Western Parade. Police departments are very good at seizing opportunities for public relations. We’re in Texas — of course cops will take the chance to do photo-ops on horses! The FWPD’s mounted patrol unit was there, of course, cosplaying as cowboys, alongside sheriff’s deputies from multiple counties around the state. In fact, this year’s parade was quite explicitly described by the stock show as an opportunity to honor law enforcement.
Despite all this, the Border Patrol’s presence was still unnerving. The agency isn’t in the headlines nearly as much as it was during Trump’s presidency, when children were dying in its custody and reporters revealed a Facebook group populated by thousands of Border Patrol agents who used it to share racist, sexist and violent memes. But we’re still not all that far removed from that viral incident in 2021 when Border Patrol agents were captured on camera being openly and aggressively cruel to Haitian migrants along the Rio Grande, all while on horseback!
In 2014, Politico labeled the Border Patrol “America’s most out-of-control law enforcement agency,” and the agency has a long history of using degrading, brutal, and racist tactics to make crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as difficult and humiliating as possible. Border Patrol agents are not people who, as one of the parade co-chairmen said in a news release, “protect our state and community” — unless you believe Texas and Fort Worth are safer when immigrants are denied their basic human rights.
While they may be silly, city parades are still an expression of underlying values, and we should take that seriously. You can only let so many people march in your parade, and those who make the cut represent what and who we choose to collectively celebrate. It's great that the Sons of Confederate Veterans can’t carry a hate symbol in the official parade anymore. That is — and I want to stress this — the absolute bare minimum we should expect.
The fact that the parade valorizes an institution so clearly rotten as the U.S. Border Patrol should depress anyone who cares about making Fort Worth a safe, welcoming community. And there are so many other entities the stock show could center their parade around! The UAW and the Teamsters both had representatives this morning. Maybe next year’s All Western Parade should pay tribute to organized labor instead!