ABSTRACT
In an essay in Uganda’s New Times (July 19, 2005) the editorialist observed the symbolic importance of the AIDS red ribbon: “The Red Ribbon represents red-like love, as a symbol of passion and tolerance towards those affected, red-like blood, representing the pain caused by the many people that died of AIDS, red-like the anger about the helplessness by which we are facing a disease for which there is still no chance for a cure, and Red as a sign of warning not to carelessly ignore one of the biggest problems of our time.” 1 The modern meaning of the ribbon as a public acknowledgement of identification seems to begin in 1979 when yellow ribbons were displayed everywhere in America in support of Americans then being held hostage by revolutionary forces in Iran. The tradition was seen as a continuation of a much older one reflecting the American popular tune “Around Her Neck She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” which had been recorded for the Library of Congress’s Archive of Folk Culture in 1938 by Sidney Robertson Cowell. But the song is older (in the last act of Othello, Desdemona sings one of the song’s lyric ancestors). The act of a public identification through showing or bearing icons had been a staple of twentieth century America, from the NRA Eagle to the gold star in the window of those families who had lost a child in war. The yellow ribbon intended to create an empathetic identification with the state of the hostages. They were understood as a “class” whatever their own individual identities.
