In a time of immoral laws, patriotism looks like treason

So says David S. Reynolds in his biography John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. (p. 99) It sounds good, and in a way, I agree with him. You’d have to be pretty dense to miss the fact that he published those words in the United States in 2005, a period when popular sentiment in the US was finally coming around to the fact that the US government, lead by Bush and Cheney, has really gutted the Bill of Rights. They have ensured that standing up for the Bill of Rights can be construed as treason without too much effort.

I can understand why for white Americans, this could all be very shocking. But as a Black American, I am immediately forced to recognise the contradiction in terms of the self-identification I used just a few words ago. Black American never seems to fit right. Maybe because when America was made, the writers of its foundational documents were people composed of two groups: those who actively supported slavery and those who were willing to sacrifice recognition of the humanity of Blacks in order to make America. Yet, the fact that I was born in Los Angeles, primarily educated in the USA, and am a graduate of her most famous university make me American of some kind, whether I like it or not.

But that doesn’t mean I forget that my rights were once forgotten, foregone, non-existent. I do not forget that because of the laws of the United States of America and its member states and commonwealths, in the antebellum USA, I never could have been born a child of mixed race parentage, at least not without being owned by my father. Indeed, I could not have been born to married parents of mixed heritage in many parts of that nation until about 40 years ago. It continues to be true that there are neighbourhoods where it wouldn’t exactly be safe for someone who looks like me to grow up (Boston’s South Side offers some notable examples according to people in the know).

This reminds me of the ridiculousness of a suggestion I got from a postdoc at Perimeter Institute last fall, who told me that “you Black people are always making race an issue, and you need to realize that slavery ended a long time ago, and racism isn’t an issue anymore.” Really, was it a long time ago when the police were firing into a crowd of Mexicanos and Chicanos in Los Angeles’s Macarthur Park while they peacefully marched for their rights? Because I think that was a few months ago … As Langston Hughes wrote in 1938:

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

( America never was America to me.)

So I wonder about all this patriotism and principles and the loss of them and their initial existence. Walk into any bookstore these days and you will find a myriad of books describing the downfall of our “once great democracy” under Bush/Cheney. The American Left is profiting nicely from publishing rant after rant after rant about how America the Great is now becoming America the Stained. But when was it ever unstained?

Blacks weren’t the first group to be sacrificed on the alter of the New World. Before America’s European ancestors could dream of the ~ 60 million who taken from Africa and forced to suffer (and in many cases not survive) the middle passage, they were systematically wiping out those First Nations who were indigenous to this land. And Europeans with the financial power exploited whomever they could get their hands on: the Irish can tell their own horrific tales of indentured servitude, which, though fundamentally different from the institution of slavery, was in its way a gross degradation of fellow humans.

We needn’t stay domestic to find examples of the ways in which America has fundamentally ignored basic human decency. We only need go south to Central and South America and ask the victims of that region’s myriad of US-backed dictatorships. To Vietnam to interview those who survived the aftermath of agent orange and napalm. To Iraq and Afghanistan where the US seems to be spreading freedom like a fatal disease. To Hawai’i where the peoples continue to actively resist American colonialism.

I have said many times that perhaps Bush and Cheney are a wake up call for those of us who truly believe that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (US Declaration of Independence) Putting aside the sexism, I think that’s a pretty good statement and apparently a lot of people in France did too. It’s too bad that the writers of this document didn’t believe it enough. If they had, they never would have scratched an explicit comment about slavery to appease their Southern brethren. Thomas Jefferson felt bad about slavery all the way to the bank with his 100 slaves (some of whom were his children). And the first President of the USA, George Washington, lead troops in the Revolutionary fight for Freedom, but certainly not on behalf of his Black Slaves.

These guys went on to write a Constitution that counted Blacks as 3/5ths of a human for the purposes of congressional districting. I needn’t say much about that since it kind of speaks for itself.

So, at the end of the day, I think at the very least this should call into question Amercans’ unquestioning belief in the essential holiness of the USA’s founding documents. Let’s step back and think about who these so-called American heroes were: sexist, racist, slave-owning, presumably homophobic, rather smart, dicks. Yeah, as far as heroes go, I’ll say “Thanks, but no thanks.” The true heroes in the tale of America are the ones who stood up to the American establishment and called it on its shit: Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, John Brown (who wrote a new, anti-racist/anti-slavery Declaration and Constitution), Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, César Chávez, the Little Rock 9, Albert Einstein and the nameless millions who have died here and abroad resisting the USA’s racist and colonialist policies.

Thankfully for them, I am not working in the fields, I have been given the privelege of pursuing (astro)physics. They also ought to give all of us pause in moments of praise for what America is and what America supposedly stands for. Does it make sense, in 2007, for us to blindly cling to standards set by sexist and racist founders over 200 years ago? And when did we come to a point where even the Left refused to acknowledge the painful reality of how the constitution has failed the downtrodden of this nation? Some of your antecedents, the Garrisonians, were braver, calling the constitution “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell” in light of its failure to protect Blacks.

Many will be compelled to respond immediately by reminding me
of the various Constitutional Amendments which broadened the priveleges given previously only to white men to women and eventually people of colour. They might continue on to say that while the constitution itself was an imperfect document, its great gift to USAmericans is the ability to make these necessary changes. I will acknowledge this as a strength of the system. The racism that was built-in could theoretically be written out. But that doesn’t make American history a history I am proud of. I will believe I am going to hell for being a lesbian before I teach my children to revere Thomas Jefferson as a moral man. More importantly, that doesn’t mean we wrote racism out of society, and the constitution is being used these days to protect those who would seek to end programs designed to make up for the effects of racist and sexist discrimination. (I am a proponent of expanding these programs to include all who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, as in, affirmative action for poor white folks too.)

The United States is now openly making a name for itself as an international bully. We can only begin to oppose this if we acknowledge that this behaviour is not new, not invented by Bush, was used by Clinton (who was also bombing Afghanistan while he kicked poor moms off welfare because apparently the “lazy fucks” were staying home and taking care of their kids, our future, on the government’s shitastic tab), and runs to the heart of how this nation was founded, on the land and the genocide and enslavement of whole peoples.

It’s time, at the minimum, for people to get off their high horse about hate speech laws and engage in a debate about what is and isn’t freedom that lasts longer than a minute (in other words, doesn’t end with “but the first amendment says …). While Canada could take a lesson on a lot of things (global warming, First Nations policy, teaching history in schools etc), the USA can take a lesson from their North American neighbours about how to make people feel like they are potentially all protected members of society and that these protections will be legally enforced.

There’s plenty more to be said, and I wish that I could devote time to proper editing and a better fleshing out of these ideas. But for the moment, I’ll let Langston Hughes take it from here:

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--Let it be that great strong land of loveWhere never kings connive nor tyrants schemeThat any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where LibertyIs crowned with no false patriotic wreath,But opportunity is real, and life is free,Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.I am the red man driven from the land,I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--And finding only the same old stupid planOf dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,Tangled in that ancient endless chainOf profit, power, gain, of grab the land!Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!Of work the men! Of take the pay!Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.I am the worker sold to the machine.I am the Negro, servant to you all.I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--Hungry yet today despite the dream.Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!I am the man who never got ahead,The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dreamIn the Old World while still a serf of kings,Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,That even yet its mighty daring singsIn every brick and stone, in every furrow turnedThat's made America the land it has become.O, I'm the man who sailed those early seasIn search of what I meant to be my home--For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,And torn from Black Africa's strand I cameTo build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?Surely not me? The millions on relief today?The millions shot down when we strike?The millions who have nothing for our pay?For all the dreams we've dreamedAnd all the songs we've sungAnd all the hopes we've heldAnd all the flags we've hung,The millions who have nothing for our pay--Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--The land that never has been yet--And yet must be--the land where every man is free.The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--Who made America,Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--The steel of freedom does not stain.From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,We must take back our land again,America!

O, yes,I say it plain,America never was America to me,And yet I swear this oath--America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,We, the people, must redeemThe land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.The mountains and the endless plain--All, all the stretch of these great green states--And make America again!

  -- Langston Hughes