WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN AMERICAN?
For quite a while, I have been contemplating many issues in America that I have come to believe are all interconnected! I began thinking about this when the NFL protests began with kneeling during the National Anthem. My gut instinct was to be very opposed to the protesting because I am someone who stands for the National Anthem even if I am alone in a room and it comes on TV. However, I also respect the right of anyone to protest anything they choose in the way they choose. The problem I see here is that if you intend to actually change things, the way you protest is very important. If you just want to draw attention to yourself and make the news, that is easy to do. IF you TRULY want to change things, then offending everyone with the ability to change them is not the way to go. YES, you have the right to do it, but that doesn’t always mean you should. One side note concerning the right to protest. That right does not apply when you are on the clock. Ask any teacher how many rights we give up when we walk into a classroom. Imagine any other job where you could offend at least half of your customers and still keep your job. But this was just the first phase of my line of thought, so if you are preparing to debate me on this point, keep reading and hang in there. I have already had several debates on this issue and I doubt anyone’s mind has been changed.
The second line of thought that I had was related to American Culture. This one popped into my head at Halloween and when considering the issue of immigration to this nation. Now, I know those two things seem disconnected, but wait a little longer and I will bring them together.
Third, the debate over the removal of statues across the country. As a history teacher, I believe the single biggest problem we can have is forgetting our history. By removing monuments, we forget what we suffered in the past. If you are offended by those monuments, then thank God, we are better today than we were before, but judging past figures by our standards today would erase everyone from our history. Find me a perfect figure in history and I will show you their faults. They all had them, but that shouldn’t erase what they did to impact history, for better or worse. Taking down even Civil War Statues doesn’t change the history, it just allows us to forget it. If you want to doom us to repeating those mistakes, this is the surest way to do it!
Finally, all of the political issues facing the United States today bring to mind serious doubt that we as a nation can survive the world we live in today! With racial hate being thrown around by all sides without any thought to the damage it does, with politics being scorched Earth on every issue, with Left and Right not just debating issues and compromising, but hating each other to the point of not listening at all! Every White person being told you have White privilege so you could not possibly understand any struggle in life, and every minority group thinking their pain is the only pain, how can we ever solve the issue of Race. Until we realize the goal should not be to make up for the past, but learn from it and make the future better, I am afraid we are doomed.
Now, all of these things seem unconnected, but they all actually lead to one real question: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN AMERICAN? I have a theory where we lost track of that. It is when we started destroying our myths and legends. As a history teacher, I always want to know more and I always want to know the truth, but I think we have had a generation that has used that to destroy our heroes and legends. They served to unite us as a nation and teach us lessons and morals, and true or not they served a purpose. By destroying them one by one, what connects us anymore? If we are a bunch of disjointed groups with nothing connecting us, we are doomed as a nation as so many before us have been! I’m going to give a couple of examples of what I mean below. Maybe it will help clarify my point!
When I was a child, I was taught the story of Pocahontas and John Smith. A romance that helped unite 2 peoples and stop bloodshed if only temporarily! Now, I learned and always taught the true story in my classes, but I also told the legend. The legend served as the ideal! What we should have done right. Not the romance, because Pocahontas was only 12 and John Smith was 34, but the uniting 2 peoples part. But today, John Smith and the English are devils and the Natives were perfect. Neither is true, but no one bothers to delve deeper into a very complex story.
George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree and told his father he could not tell a lie. A biographer who had nothing on Washington’s childhood made it up and it stuck for a long time! Wouldn’t it be nice if we had politicians who didn’t lie? We erased the moral when we learned the truth. The result is that today we assume all politicians are always lying and George Washington was a slave owning monster we need to erase from history? How can we ever be united when we can’t even see the miracles the Father of Our country managed to pull off.
The First Thanksgiving Story is nothing like most of learned in our youth, but that story gives us hope. Is that a bad thing? Yeah, the history is mostly wrong, but again the idea of 2 vastly different groups managing to find common ground is worth thinking about today.
We need these legends. From one of my favorite movies, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, “This is the West (America)! When the Legend becomes fact, print the legend!” Our legends helped create the ideal for America. The streets are paved with gold! We are not and never will be perfect, but we created a nation that allows us to keeping striving toward perfection. Yes, we have treated some groups terribly, but look how far we have come in that treatment. Do we still have further to go, absolutely, but we can only get there by working together and being ONE people.
So, that brings me to how all of these things are connected! Whatever race we are, whatever country we come from, in the end we have to see ourselves as ONE people. If we don’t do that, we have no nation. We are just a disjointed group of unrelated peoples that eventual tear each other apart. We need our connections, our holidays, our legends. If you are offended by them, add your traditions, but don’t demand that everyone else give up theirs. Anyone on any side who spews hate about America, ask yourself why are you here? I don’t mean this as go back to wherever you came from. I mean, if this nation is so bad compared to others, leave. Isn’t it your duty to put your family in the best place you possibly can. If America isn’t it, then find the country that you think is and go there. If you, like so many millions, realize how lucky you are to be an American despite all of our problems, then stop spewing the hate and fix the problems. Destroying history, disrespecting our flag and traditions, hating each other for our differences is not helping anyone including yourself. Stop debating the trivial and fix the serious.
I will conclude with, I don’t care if Colin Kaepernick kneels for the anthem or not. It doesn’t change anything in my world or anyone else’s. If he and all the others who are kneeling are serious about their protest, then after you kneel, stand up and actually work to change the problems. Stop fighting about our differences and focus on what we have in common. We all want what is best for our families. We all want our kids to have a better life and be better than ours. We all want to be able to live the way we choose without being punished for it. If you justify your bad behavior by the behavior of others, are you any better than them? I always told my classes the way to change the world is one person at a time. Yourself. You cannot change anyone else, but you can change yourself. If you do that and I do that and everyone else does that, then we change the world. Regardless of your race, regardless of how you have been treated, regardless of the trials you have face, you are no better or worse than anyone else. We are all flawed and we are all Americans. We will never be perfect, but maybe we can create a…MORE PERFECT UNION.
