Race and Patriotism.
When I was in 6th grade it was 1976 - year of the Bicentennial.
Like many elementary schools at the time, mine had a pageant. Every class was assigned a different creative performance project to celebrate the event, all of which were to be enacted throughout the school for our parent’s pleasure. My teachers planned to have a few of us represent different historical figures: Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, etc. and recite an important passage from them or related to them. Taking creative license, my teacher decided that I would portray Martin Luther King.
Now, so you know, I’m Irish. Welsh-Irish. About the whitest kid you’d know. Still am. Another kid, a black kid, portrayed Washington.
While he was expected to step forward and read aloud one of Washington’s many letters to Congress during the revolutionary war, it was my assignment to learn and recite the first part of the “I have a dream” speech. I remember the day it was performed. Our “stage” was one of the many glass-enclosed hallways in our Elementary school, a place that was brand new at the time. I was dressed in a gray suit, no makeup - just me looking like me. When it was my turn, I stepped forward and the teacher said the name - “Martin Luther King”. At first there was a slow rumble - the kind you hear when a surprise is revealed. Then, ever so slowly, all the parents began to applaud. When I was first informed that this would be my role, I remember saying something along the lines of “But I don’t LOOK like Martin Luther King”. By the time I began reciting that well known speech, I knew, at 11 years old, how ballsy a move this was for my school - and also how healing.
I’m sure there are those of you out there who read this and say something along the lines of “those damn liberal teachers”, but, to be honest, that moment cemented for me what I’ve always loved about this country: The fact that no matter how wrong we’ve been in the past, no matter what set of circumstances become normal despite their questionable morality, Americans always strive to be better than they are.
My parents were equal parts democrat and republican, but we grew up here in New York, a melting pot. From an early age, my schoolmates were Black, Indian, Iranian, Puerto Rican, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Russian, Italian, Armenian…you name it, we had at least one or more in our school. You learned early on that your identity as an American is tied in with theirs, your view of this country - the one you learn in school - is identical to theirs. While there were bigoted parents who taught their children wrong, it wasn’t happening in my house or with my friends. We would have looked at a them with discomfort. It just wasn’t the way we were brought up.
As I became older, I learned more about the different meanings of patriotism. Needing to personalize it, I resolved that it was something along these lines - we live in an imperfect world and an imperfect country, but our job as citizens is to always question those imperfections and find a way to right them for love of the country. One quote always came to mind:
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain
To me, race and patriotism are inextricably tied together, for we cannot be true to our country if we attempt to keep others down, either literally or figuratively. For quite some time, we were the beacon other countries followed. We were a people who always strived to be better, even when we didn’t have to.
For eight years, these ideas have been foreign here. We’ve had a population - a majority - that through fear or convenience decided it was okay to follow our government blindly and allow Arabs as a race and Muslimism as a religion to become the necessary evil. We didn’t have to do this. It was just easy. We needed someone to blame for our vulnerability in 2001 and since some of the perpetrators fit that description we found a vessel for our hatred. Our government, against it’s better nature, fanned that hatred. Sure, they’ll tell you otherwise. Let you know that they were doing everything in their power to keep you safe, and they couldn’t control this kind of collateral damage. I could never accept that excuse.
Today we have a President with African blood. We have mixed-race couples everywhere and no one bats an eye (I’m one of those statistics, with two kids as well). Within 20 years, we will have American schools where half of the student body is mixed. We will have kids that no one can tell off-hand what they are. We already have kids who couldn’t give a damn as to whether their boyfriends or girlfriends are of another race.
And we will look back on these past 8 years as a detour from the idea of America and the definition of patriotism - and the people who followed this previous administration as a scared crowd very similar to some Germans during Hitler - who needed to direct their anger at the depression and found the Jews, courtesy of their complicit government.
