“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin stood by her previous comments on Monday saying that she feels “unsafe” in neighborhoods with many American flags.
While appearing on the “Behind the Table” podcast, Hostin told the show’s executive producer, Brian Teta, “I stand by that.”
“I was going to say what’s interesting is that this is not a new conversation in the Black community,” Hostin said.
She then recounted a time she visited White friends at a beach house in North Carolina and felt “nervous” after spotting a Confederate flag.
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“I’m in the South,” Hostin recalled. “I’ve got these two kids with me. I look the way that I look, and I’m walking past a Confederate flag with a group of dudes in a pickup truck on the beach. And I scurried back to the house and I said to the hosts, ‘Do you know that there’s a Confederate flag out there? You know, it didn’t feel great.’ And they had seen the flag for years, but it didn’t have the same effect on them as it would have on me.”
During “The View” last week, while discussing celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary, Hostin recalled a previous occasion in 2021 when she said on the show that she feels uncomfortable in neighborhoods with numerous American flags.
“I said this on this show many, many years ago, because this is my tenth year on the show,” she said. “I said there are times when I walk into a community and I see American flags all over the community and I suddenly feel unsafe because there’s a section of this country that has co-opted the American flag, and they equate being an American or an American flag with White supremacy and that should never be the symbol of White supremacy, but they have weaponized.”
On Monday’s podcast, she emphasized that she does not have a problem with the American flag on its own but rather when she sees a community with “flags everywhere.”
“Unfortunately, at this point in our country, the American flag has been co-opted by the far right. They call themselves patriots, people that storm the Capitol with Confederate flags and American flags. And they’ve weaponized the American flag. That is something that is happening in this country. And to deny that is ridiculous to me,” Hostin said.
She also voiced support for liberal efforts to “reclaim” the American flag.
“I would be very happy to be part of a take the flag back, reclaim the American flag as a symbol of what it should be, which is, I think, justice, which I think is freedom. I think it’s equality. It’s sort of… the promise of this country,” Hostin said.
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In 2021, Hostin spoke on “The View” about Black Americans feeling uncomfortable in neighborhoods with American flags, defending MSNBC analyst Mara Gay for her controversial admission that she found it “disturbing” to see American flags, Trump flags and signs criticizing then-President Joe Biden in Long Island, New York.
