Bottom line, these are private hunt clubs who set their own requirements and use their own verbiage. If they want to require that members ride only bay TB geldings, they can. If they want to require that members ride only in full bridles, they can. If they want to call to the color on a hunt coat collar Confederate Grey or Damn Yankee Blue, they can. If members don’t like it they can speak up or leave. If members leave the hunt would fold so this probably isn’t a big deal for the hunts who use the color since they haven’t folded.
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The vast majority of hunts do not have colored jackets; they stick to the conventional black and scarlet. There are notable exceptions: Aiken wears dark green jackets with tan/beige colors, a handful of others have green jackets and some have dark blue. I think I saw one in the hunt roster that @Janet posted a link to that DID have grey jackets. But that’s a 8 or 9 hunts out of ~140. So, when one someone refers to a hunt’s color or colors, I assume they’re talking about the color of the collar and lapel (sometimes piping too if it’s a racy outfit. 
) unless otherwise specified.
That may be because I hunted for years with one of the hunts on Janet’s list, and have never hunted anywhere where the colors included a different color jacket.
And yes, I think the choice/symbology is intentional. You can describe the color as blue gray, dove grey, West Point Grey, French Grey or just plain grey. If you specify “confederate grey”, I think there’s a reason.
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Would you demand they change the name if it were “Nazi Grey”? I think they used grey on their uniforms.
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Yes, obviously, of course as a private club a hunt CAN do whatever it wants. However, I would argue that the implications are wider than just for that particular club. As a proponent of fox hunting (not just my own club), I cringe when I hear negative perceptions about fox hunting–and I hear them all the time. The top two negative perceptions I hear are: 1) that it is cruel and 2) some version of it being an irrelevant pastime for snobby, elitist people. A proper campaign to fight these perceptions includes educating people about the hunt’s role with regard to land conservation and preservation of habitat for wildlife as well as demonstrating an active, welcoming community presence, and most importantly encouraging youth participation.
Personally, I think each club is responsible for its own public image as well as the image of the sport of fox hunting in general. (Other people’s opinions may very.) Each person can examine their own hunt club, but a club of mostly/exclusively white people that has club colors that honor the confederacy…well I think it could be easy to see how an outsider might wonder about racist undertones. It’s not consistent with the look of a vibrant, interesting and positive part of a community.
I’m not an idiot, I am well aware that hunts are all about tradition and that hunts are often loathe to change. Unfortunately, given shrinking hunt territories and a lack of general support for fox hunting, I don’t think this is a good option. I think many hunts have done a wonderful job of encouraging youth membership–just look at the growing popularity of the JNAFHC. But I think there is a lot of work to be done yet with regard to improving our public image overall.
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Well stated on all accounts!
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Do people who dont know of the existence of the color “Confederate grey” immediately recognize it as such? This thread is the first I’m hearing of it, so I’m wondering just how offputting the colors of the hunt might be to those very few randos who happen to see this hunt out and about.
Like it probably isnt offputting to the general public, because they’ll likely just see grey…or really nothing. I live where people hunt and i never see them. And I–a fairly educated person–would probably just see grey.
Like members of said hunts, sure, ask to drop that Confederate adjective, but probably that’s not what is keeping people from foxhunting these days.
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It’s like Salmon and Pink. Salmon is considered a variant of the color Pink and is quite common in certain kinds of clothing, but pretty much anyone who sees something classified as Salmon-colored would simply call it Pink, because they don’t know any differently without being told otherwise.
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I disagree (mildly). Salmon is included as a crayon in the Crayola 64 pack. Yes, it’s a shade of pink, but I think more people could identify it than you might wonder.
Confederate grey is not as readily identified by sight, I don’t think. Maybe it is in the South? There is a shade of grey that I [a northerner] would call “confederate” if I was asked to name a bunch of swatches. But I don’t think I could look at a random swatch of grey and say “that’s confederate” with the same confidence that I would say “that’s salmon”.
But in this case, I don’t think the point is that people can look at the colors on the collar of a hunt coat and name them as Confederate and thus draw conclusions about the nature of the hunt’s thoughts on racism. To my mind, it’s about the NAME (not the color) and what it implies; that being a desire to honor the tradition of the Confederate Army and what it was formed and stood for.
Whether or not that is actually why a given hunt would choose Confederate Grey as a color may be somewhat irrelevant. If they chose that name–knowing the baggage that comes with it–they are either implicitly or explicitly saying they are okay with what the name means. If they want to choose it because they do honor the tradition of the confederation, that says things pretty clearly. If they picked it anyway, what they are saying is that they don’t care enough about the implications to chose another named shade they like.
I’m not sure about other hunts, but I know that in mine, there is a very specific shade of Maroon that is our color. It has a PMS code for printed materials and a HEX code for online use. It is noticed when the “wrong” maroon is used on official hunt stuff. We have been around for 80 years and the traditional color matters to us. I can only imagine that it would also matter to those hunts who have a longer and more storied history than we do. Changing our color would be a BIG DEAL, but I would like to think we would be open to the discussion if the name of our color had racial undertones. (Which, to the best of my knowledge, it does not.)
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I’m a northerner…I have never looked at any grey and went man, that’s exactly like the Confederate uniform grey! How appalling!
Like, it’s 100% a non distinctive color of grey, and I’ve seen glory and dances with wolves no less than 6000 times.
Salmon is totally distinctive :lol:
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I definitely wouldn’t recognize it, and I went to a college where Civil War reenactment was considered cool. But if I were told the colors or read them on the hunt’s website or on the MFHA page I would be concerned about what other good old days traditions/culture were still practiced.
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I know of a club whose colors are red. Does that make them Communists? Maybe we should ask the New York Times to run an article. That should go well.
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I called those pink pants once.
Once.
I was immediately corrected and spent the rest of the day talking to the host’s dog.
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You probably came out the winner in that situation :lol:
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Mounted foxhunting is the minority of houndsmen. Most foxhunters in Virginia (and in other parts of the US) are night hunters - and I can assure you all that they are a very racially and culturally diverse group.
If the OP wanted to pick a fight - this is a bizarre one to pick. Hunting with hounds in the US is a racially and socioeconomically diverse form of hunting. And making it about slavery is going to get you laughed out of town.
I guess you might want to accuse homeowners with a covered porch of racism because of the tradition of painting porch ceilings Hain’t Blue. But if you don’t know what a Haint is, you probably don’t know about the Gullah Geechee.
ETA I apologize xeroxchick I quoted the wrong post. This wasn’t directed at you.
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Oh, and I thought jackets were hunting “Pink “ after the name of the tailor. Grey/gray is a neutral colour that goes with everything.
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I think I’ve solved the discrepancy between you and @Janet.
@Janet’s reference is specifically for evening attire. Evening Scarlet is usually only worn to the hunt ball or the MFHA ball, and most invitations state “Evening scarlet if convenient.” Very few hunting members go to the trouble and expense of having an evening tail coat made in their hunt’s colors, but if a member of Rappahannock did, their evening attire colors do include confederate grey collars and old gold lapels. Their regular, hunting livery is just a black or navy jacket with brick breeches, no colors on the collar and I would assume, hunt buttons. It is entirely possible, even likely, that you could hunt with a pack for years and not know that their evening attire was different than their hunting attire.
As for the larger issue, I think it would be wise for hunts to drop the “confederate” designation from the descriptions of hunt livery. I don’t think it sends the message that hunts concerned about attracting new members to the sports would want to send. No need to re-fight the war; just recognize that describing the color that way is an anachronism in 2020.
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No of course not. However, I personally would be slightly taken aback if I was interested in joining a sports club and found out that they described their red uniforms as “Communist Red.”
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:lol:
I would think it was hilarious.
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Oh, and I thought jackets were hunting “Pink “ after the name of the tailor. Grey/gray is a neutral colour that goes with everything.
That is an oft repeated story, and may even be true, though if you’re staying close to the source material, you call them “Pinques” after the tailor.
Because I am a persnickety person, I have to point out again we are not talking about the color of the jackets! We are talking about the colors, the little bits of fabric on the collar, lapel and sometimes, the facings.
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Thanks for the tip. Pinques it is then. And all this fuss over a small piece of cloth that doesn’t even cover the whole collar. That’s me being persnickety too.😊
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