America, the Beautiful

The Democratic National Convention is over, and, by any measure, it was a success.  The diversity of the party was on full display. Speakers ranged from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Republican Adam Kinzinger.  The raucous roll-call vote with DJ Cassidy captured the nation’s attention.  And the Vice President presented herself in a way to allay concerns that she was some radical San Francisco liberal.  

But there was one disappointing choice. Refusing to allow a Palestinian American to speak was a mistake.  The decision screamed that the tent of the Democratic Party is only so big. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in Vanity Fair: “The symbols [of the Convention] communicated the breadth of the Democratic Party’s coalition, as well as its limits.”   Delegates heard directly the pain and grief of the family of an Israeli hostage, but Palestinians, as Adam Serwer writes, “could only have their story told for them rather than by them.”   That was wrong. 

There were powerful moments, though.  The testimony of the teacher from Sandy Hook and the mother of a child killed in Uvalde tugged at our hearts.  And the moment when four of the five men of the exonerated Central Park 5 walked on stage and reminded the delegates not just of Donald Trump’s racism, but of the brokenness of the criminal justice system.  As the convention touted the Vice President’s record as a prosecutor, the presence of those men recalled the cruel consequences of prosecutorial misconduct and the social panic around crime.  They were supposedly “wilding”; they were the so-called “super-predators.”  That kind of talk helped justify stealing the childhood innocence of these men.  

Korey Wise spoke first. He was just sixteen when they sent him to an adult prison for thirteen years.  He wore his USA hat and shirt with the letters USA and the American flag emblazoned across his chest with a soft peach sports jacket. Yusef Salaam, the New York City Councilman, followed.  He spoke eloquently about how he wanted “to make sure that democracy continue[d] in America” and how he desired “to go from living the American nightmare to living the American dream again.”  He ended with the words, “God bless the United States of America.”  

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I was struck.  Uncomfortable really.  Honestly, I didn’t know how to respond to this patriotic embrace.  Not only by Wise and Salaam, but by the convention itself.  I know the shouts of USA and the waving of the American flag are a critical part of American political theater.  And I understand the effort of the Democrats to possess the language of freedom and to claim the mantle of patriotism considering the treacherous behavior and rhetoric of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.  

I guess this is what the 1619 Project reached for: that these Black people, my people, were the true patriots. But I couldn’t help but think then, and now, about all those Black people, given the violent racism that shadowed their lives, who could not embrace the flag. Many believed this country, although it was ours, could never be a place where we could flourish. 

Even Michelle Obama once expressed her ambivalence. Remember when she said that “[f]or the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.” Those words created a political firestorm as some asked how could she not be proud of America?

American patriotism has always been a complicated affair.  

I reached for the words of James Baldwin in No Name in the Street to give me language for what I felt Thursday night:

To be an Afro-American, or an American black, is to be in the situation, intolerably exaggerated, of all those who have ever found themselves part of a civilization which they could in no wise honorably defend—which they were compelled, indeed, endlessly to attack and condemn—and yet spoke out of the most passionate love, hoping to make the kingdom new, to make it honorable and worthy of life.

Lonnie Bunch, the Secretary of the Smithsonian, once told me that America is much more than an idea; it is an argument.  The formulation is a bit startling in that it forces a reconsideration of the view that the idea of America is settled and fixed – that, in times of trouble, we need only invoke its meaning (we are the shining city on the hill!) and our purpose would be clear.  But Secretary Bunch points us to the ongoing battles that make up this country.  Struggles over its meaning, over the contradictions that make up our history, struggles over who we take ourselves to be as Americans.  

The frightening part, from one vantage point at least, is that we have struggled since the beginning to be one nation.  Divided over the issue of race and culture, we have waged war, both physically and figuratively, trying to figure out exactly who we are.  And those on one side of the battle have repeatedly used the flag to bludgeon those who clamor for a more just America. Appeals to country by the likes of Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise offer a resounding response.  They know intimately of the evils of this place. Yet, America belongs to them, too. 

The novelist, Ralph Ellison, taught me not to surrender this country to those who claim it as theirs and theirs alone.  “I, too, am America.”  But Ellison’s became an uncritical embrace as he defended the war in Vietnam.  The same for the writer, Albert Murray. On occasion, their patriotism blinded them to the ugliness of this place.   How might we imagine an embrace of America without evasion? To see the country for what it is and has been and to speak, still, out of the most passionate love to make the kingdom new? 

Amid all the chants of USA, the flag waving, and the appeals to patriotism, I worried that the price of it all may be a bit too high—a willful blindness that would keep certain people and events off stage.    And I prayed for a different kind of embrace of country, one that doesn’t require our innocence but honest love.  

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