Independence Day for Conflicted Americans

Janelle Monáe and friends performing "Americans"

Here's something I shared on social media:

 

Spending part of July 3 bringing lunches to poor people in the projects and homeless people in tent cities in the wealthiest country on Earth in the middle of a grossly mismanaged response to a pandemic makes me really excited about Independence Day this year.

 

(Just in case you missed it, yes, that is sarcasm.) Don’t get me wrong, I’m really, really glad to help, and I'm thankful for my friend who got me involved in the team. If people are suffering, one should help them. But it’s hard to get excited about a country that has the wealth to totally eliminate poverty, but has continued to choose not to do so year after year while the problems are in some cases actually getting worse. MLK made this point in the 1960’s. Others made it before him. There is no excuse.

 

I guess I’ve always been conflicted about my country. Even before the pandemic, we had a lot of problems: gross economic inequality, racial and gender disparities, a political system that seems designed for gridlock, a large part of the country that actively fights against anything that might solve our problems, etc.

 

But the pandemic brought this all into the light. As I was saying toward the beginning of the pandemic, many Americans finally saw that many of the pillars of our society were entirely imaginary—our culture of work, our economic system, our systemic racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia… all of this is erected on imaginary rules. But of course imaginary things can still cause suffering. It’s not enough to say that “money isn’t real” or “race isn’t real” when it’s our ideas about those things that cause suffering.

 

So, it’s especially hard to feel good about America on our Independence Day this year.

 

So why don’t I leave? To be entirely honest, if I had gotten a job in another country, I may well have taken it.

 

But if I’m being honest, despite all the ways that America breaks my heart, I love this place because of our diversity, our music (most of the best of which we owe to African Americans), our food (from hip New Orleans fusion cuisine to Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme there’s something weirdly creative about American food), our openness to innovation (if only we could put some of this innovation into societal issues), our friendliness (it’s hard to see with the obnoxious people lately, but for all our many faults, most Americans are pretty nice folks). But most of all I love our potential. We could make America truly great for the first time if we really wanted to.

 

And here I think we can all learn a lot from two famous Black Americans: Frederick Douglass and Janelle Monáe (stay with me here, it makes sense!). 

 

Check out this amazing video of Douglass’s descendants reading his famous 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”  (Be sure to stay tuned to the discussion of the speech by his descendants.)

 

And check out Monáe’s performance of her song “Americans” from her 2018 album Dirty Computer.

 

Neither Douglass nor Monáe shy away from a bitter rebuke of their homeland. But neither is ready to entirely give up on America, either. Because of the potential that both of them see.

 

As a cishet white man in America in 2020, I of course feel these issues in different ways than either Douglass or Monáe. But the way I look at it is this: if Douglass and Monáe can have hope for America’s potential, then why can’t I?

 

Happy Independence Day.