I think I've had a small breakthrough in characterizing the activities of progressives in their ideological onslaught. Consider the following paragraphs from the heading Under Seige:
The criminal justice system - Judges, legislators, mayors, governors, district attorneys and police officers routinely conspire to deprive innocent Black Americans of their rights, their freedom, and even their lives. Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Genarlow Wilson, and Shaquanda Cotton are just a few of the more prominent names among the thousands of Black men, women and children who are humiliated, brutalized, imprisoned and even killed by authorities on a daily basis for absolutely no other reason than the color of their skin. And it’s done in the name of preserving safety and order.
The mass media - Entertainment and news corporations skillfully and systematically construct meta-narratives that portray African-Americans as amoral, maladaptive, dysfunctional and unworthy of ordinary respect, with occasional exceptions. Conversely, they portray white Americans as uniquely heroic, ingenious, virtuous and worthy, with occasional exceptions. These narratives are immensely popular, and hence profitable, because they reinforce and justify white Americans’ irrational and unjustified fear and contempt of Black people, as well as their idealized self-concept.
Financial institutions - By circumscribing Black Americans’ choices of where to live, work, and learn, discriminatory lending and housing practices play a critical role in maintaining the physical, social and psychological distance required to enable American institutions to collectively assault Black Americans with moral, legal and psychological impunity.
We've gone over what whiteness is, and in typical fashion we have discovered that blackfolks know what is white better than whitefolks. This is not new or surprising to me because there is a constant trope in black partisanship that calls upon the audience's unfamiliarity with America to call it white or evil. But that jackleg industry aside, I think something deeper is going on. Something basic. And once again I think my friend from Finland was right. There is a political effort afoot to make blackfolks tribal, to disinvest them of American patriotism. That is to say, black partisans attack America for behaving like a nation when they want it to be a tribe. At the same time they see blackfolks themselves as a tribe and yet encourage them towards nationalistic goals. People like Condi Rice are excoriated for believing in American nationalism over black nationalism.
But where is the black nation? Perhaps it exists only in our minds and rhetoric.
Richard 'Wretchard' Fernandez cites the greatly esteemed John Hope Franklin as a certain hedged patriot - the patriot of the future perfect America.
In a roundup of essays on The Future of the American Idea in the Atlantic, the Winds of Change blog found an essay by John Hope Franklin, which archetypically illustrated the first type of “patriotism”: a parole held out for good behavior and time served, based on what Winds of Change called an “uncritically critical view of America”.
If the American idea was to subdue Native Americans and place them at the disposal of European settlers, to import several million Africans to the New World and subject them to a lifetime of slavery, to impose on Asian immigrants a lifetime of discrimination, then perhaps the American idea was not so admirable.
If the American idea, once the Civil War had concluded, was to sentence the freedmen to a lifetime of racial segregation, discrimination, and humiliation, then perhaps the American idea was not so praiseworthy.
Such a horrible country could not even be dignified with the name of home. Its culture was as empty and cheerless as a packaged birthday party at a fastfood restaurant. Franklin’s essay continued: “The American idea is the nation’s holiday garb, its festive dress, its Sunday best. It covers up an everyday practice of betraying the claims of equality, justice, and democracy.”
And we shouldn't be surprised at how closely this mirrors the patriotism of candidate Obama. His vision of America is the America he loves, and he will labor mightily to make this place into the place of his dreams. They are patriots of a future America, an America where x will become y and the 6 will be 9. This is in direct contradistinction to the kind of patriotism that Stevie Wonder professes as love in his great song As:
Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky---ALWAYS
Until the ocean covers every mountain high---ALWAYS
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea---ALWAYS
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream
Did you know that true love asks for nothing
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day
Stevie's is a love of the here and the now and a pledge to be that love from now until the end. This is precisely the kind of attention a nation which deserves our respect should get were we not faithless, pleasant sociopaths. I am reminded of Living Colour's plea to find the way to 'your' America. Your America is this America and it is a shared America. But it also is what it is and a faithlessness towards it is a choice to disinvest - this is costly.
I chose for the title of this post a title I bit from Gerald Early. Lure and Loathing is his book which is a collection of essays by black authors revealing their simultaneous love and contempt for America the idea and America the place. I think most intelligent, considerate people, as Fernandez says, hold a mix of the two kinds of patriotic love for America. In black partisan America, battles boil to replace one with the other and call it black.
We are not a tribe. And today being Columbus Day, we should remember that people from all over the planet, from hundreds of different tribes, have spent the efforts of their lives to find and fight for this land and to make it into the nation of their dreams. It is unquestionably worth defending patriotically. But can we defend it for what it is? Can we keep in mind Chesterton's advice against change for the sake of change without regard for the reasons of the status quo? Are we willing to say that Generlow Wilson represents black America and those who beat him represent America? Are we willing to say that the discriminator and the racist are the soul of the nation? Some are, and do on a regular basis. At best, they look for a future perfect America upon which to hang their patriotic hat.
In the Old School, I have no time for that. My American family is here. We could be somewhere else, but we're sticking around. We're dealing with the here and now, patriotic to the America that is. We're mindful about what love we forsake on account of some dream of perfection, but also decidedly aware of the flaws as they are in actuality - naming the Diallos and counting the beats on their bodies - and not pretending that every American walks in the shoes of the beater or the beaten. We are painfully aware of what our contribution means by doing it now, rather in some promised land, and we decidely give our support knowing that by doing so we make things better.
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