Monday, August 14, 2017

Words Don't Do Enough Today

When will we ever move beyond the racial issue? When will we realize that we need each other and our rich diversity to truly be the great people we like to think we are? One of the marks of what makes the United States so unique in our life is the great experiment that allows for ethnic diversity as a mark of being a citizen of the United States. It started when British and Germans and French started living side by side and began to break down barriers that separated them in Europe. Here- they were all Americans!

Then we struggled, of course. As each new wave of immigrants moved into the country they faced discrimination, prejudice, and variations of racism. Italians and Jews, Greeks and Irish were not considered part of the "white" culture, though all were as European as the British, French, and Germans. Roman Catholics were stereotyped as recently as the 1960s and their loyalty questioned because of their religion. We never faced the genocide we carried out against the native populations and kept kicking the can of slavery and racism down the road. But we did continue to evolve as a nation.

Asian immigrants joined Latinos (who had been here before some of the other immigrant groups) as the "color" of our national identity began to change. The richness of many colors and cultures added food and song, dress and language to our national psyche. So much has been assimilated, adopted, and cherished. More came from different religions, nations, and cultures. That wonderful bright beacon of freedom continued to shine, even if we periodically tarnished it or covered it up in fear. People kept wanting to come here because of who we say we are and what we have managed to accomplish. These are things that would never have been accomplished if we hadn't opened up our shores to the many immigrant groups, all of who have added new and exciting dimensions to our national character!

But there were those who disagreed and still do. The Jews and Italians would never be truly American to them. The Germans faced it again in the era of World War I. World War II saw citizens rounded up and put in detention centers because they were of Japanese descent. Even first generation American born individuals seem to want to disagree with the very openness that allowed their parents to come here in the first place. Through some incredible twisting of logic, citizenship- being a true American- is to them based on some ancestry that is not American. What crazy logic insists that someone whose family has been here for 75 years is more American than someone whose family came 175 years ago or even before the American Revolution?

Friends, that is insanity! It is also not part of the American spirit. It is not how we developed and grew into the nation we are.

And now I watch self-proclaimed "patriotic" [sic] individuals marching around Virginia waving the flag of the discredited and widely defeated enemy ideology of the Nazis!


That is where words come to a crashing halt. Emotions, deep emotions, come crashing in. Instead I have an image of my father standing somewhere in Germany or Austria at the end of World War II. As part of the victorious Allies he stands at the tail of a Nazi plane. That swastika over his shoulder is not a sign of white power. It is the sign of a defeated ideology of white supremacy- actually even more narrow than that- a specific type of white supremacy. One of the reasons the Nazis lost was specifically because of their hate-filled, racist, "Aryan"-based rhetoric. It was their inability to move beyond it in any way shape of form that led to their rerouting supplies and trains and personnel to make way for the trains taking non-Aryans to the death camps!

Dad and his fellow soldiers look satisfied. They have won. And they were about to do one of the most incredible actions by a winner in a war- they would help rebuild even those nations they had fought against! That is the American way! Not racism, revenge, and hate. The words of war had always been- "To the victor belong the spoils." We said, "No!" We didn't enter the war to gain territory, to overrun others, to take away their humanity. To us the spoils of World War II were a safer world for people to live in democratic ways!

And now, nearly 75 years later there are people waving that flag of hate and fear as if it was an American symbol.

Bullshit!

Over the past few weeks my daughter has been challenging me to be the person I have always been when it comes to this issue. Racism, based in slavery that we were unable and unwilling to truly work against in all segments of our society, remains our American Original Sin. I have been living with it, fighting it, speaking against it for most of my life. It was part of who I was in 1960 and 1963. It grew deeper as the 60s continued and I discovered my own elements of racism, bred into me by our culture. The work against racism is a deep part of who I am and what I believe.
  • White people flying Nazi flags will not make America great again. It will only defeat us as it did the Nazis in World War II.
  • Trying to ignore my own benefits of being white (and male!) in the midst of white supremacy makes me complicit.
  • Making excuses for silence will always lead to more silence- and my being as much a part of the problem as the alt-right Nazis in Virginia.
I could rant on. And I probably will again. But for today I make my statements as another declaration of my hopes for a better way of celebrating who we are and can be as patriotic citizens of the United States. I will not allow bigots, racists, and hate-filled Nazis to destroy my country- the one my Dad and his generation helped make great!

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