Gadsden Flag Racist?

[Gordon Fitch]

Dennis:
> Amid all the flag waving in my neighborhood, I thought about
> buying the original American flag, the classic Gadsden with
> coiled snake and "Don't Tread On Me" demand, and hanging it
> from my front porch.     
> http://shop.store.yahoo.com/america-store/gadsdenflag.html  
> 
> But my wife nixed this idea, saying that the flag has racist
> connotations. Years ago, she worked with Jim Ridgeway on a
> CD-ROM (and I believe laserdisc) version of "Blood in the
> Face," which is, as I'm sure most here know, a docu on the
> far right/neo-fascist groups and militias prepping for race
> war and the End of Days. Apparently the Gadsden flag is a fav
> with this crowd, but I always thought they preferred swastikas
> and the Stars & Stripes with the stars replaced with a cross.
> I thought that in the wake of the Patriot Act, the message
> "Don't Tread On Me" would resonate with my neighbors, who
> would inquire as to why I was hanging this flag. But my beloved
> thinks this will make us look like Nazis. What do the enlightened
> here think?     DP    

I've seen the rattlesnake flag several times in the less
posh areas of this outlying backwater of New York City
(Staten Island).  I feel it is in the same bag as flags of
Texas, the Stars'n'Bars, and Harley-Davidson logos -- a 
sort of lower-class good ol' Whiteboy thing -- but I haven't
asked.  The great thing about fetishes and totems is that
you're not quite sure what they mean, but goddamn they must
mean _something_.  

Plus it's got a dangerous animal on it.  Irresistable!