“This isn’t who we are.”
President-elect Joe Biden said these words in the aftermath of Wednesday’s assault on the US Capitol. Politicians like to say this during events like this. I believe that President-elect Biden and others who use that phrase mean nothing but good. They want to say that as Americans we aspire to higher goals and that what happened is something that is uncharacteristic of who we are as Americans.
This phrase comes from a good place. It’s also incredibly wrong. This is who we are. This is who we are as a nation.
African Americans, Native Americans and other persons of color are more aware of the dark sides of American history, where people are not treated equally. Those dark sides still continue to this day. It is not too far fetched to say that white Americans and persons of color had two different views as they saw the mostly white crowd running amok within the walls of the US Capitol. White Americans think “this isn’t who we are.” But African Americans and other persons of color shake their heads and say “This IS Who we are.” We say that because we know that this event wasn’t just about crazy Trump supporters. It was about race. President Trump wanted to overturn a fair election by invalidating the votes of millions of Americans in six states, many of which have substantial African American populations. While America is a better place for African Americans than it was in the 1950s and earlier, there are still challenges and that includes what happened on January 6.
It’s important for me to say that I love my country. I am proud to have an American passport so that wherever I go in the world, people know that I’m an American. I know that this nation is a beacon of hope to people living in despotic regimes and to immigrants looking for a better life. The words found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution matter. They aren’t just words; they retain an almost sacred quality to us all centuries after they were written.
It is because I love my country that I must say, let’s not kid ourselves. There are dark corners to our history. There is a lot of history to share, but I will bring up two. It was in 1920 three African American men were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota under trumped-up charges of rape. Notice I said Duluth, Minnesota and not Duluth, Georgia. Later this year, we will commemorate a century since the Tulsa Race Massacre which killed an untold number of African Americans in what was called Black Wall Street.
Contrary to the 1619 Project, America is not one long dark history of oppression. Racism and prejudice is who we are, but it isn’t all of who we are. But Americans have to wrestle with the whole of American history. We are not just an idea as some like to say, but an actual nation with an actual history that isn’t always sweetness and light. Buzzfeed spoke to a number of African Americans on the Capitol Hill police and the stories they tell are shocking. The officers “were forced to endure racist abuse — including repeatedly being called the n-word — as they tried to do their job of protecting the Capitol building, and by extension the very functioning of American democracy.” One of the cops tells how he couldn’t keep it together at the end of the day:
At the end of the night, after the crowds had been dispersed and Congress got back to the business of certifying president-elect Joe Biden’s victory, the veteran officer was overwhelmed with emotion, and broke down in the Rotunda.
“I sat down with one of my buddies, another Black guy, and tears just started streaming down my face,” he said. “I said, ‘What the fuck, man? Is this America? What the fuck just happened? I’m so sick and tired of this shit.’”
Soon he was screaming, so that everyone in the Rotunda, including his white colleagues, could hear what he had just gone through.
“These are racist-ass terrorists,” he yelled out.
We saw the dark side of America on Wednesday. But we also saw the light as well. Earlier in the day, now Senator-elect Raphael Warnock gave his victory speech. An African American man winning a Senate seat in Georgia is a big deal. In the early morning hours of January 6, he said the following:
“The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” Warnock said in the heartfelt address. “The improbable journey that led to me to this place in this historic moment in America could only happen here.”
It would be easy to focus on Warnock’s story and say, “this is America.” And it is. But you can’t understand this address if you don’t understand the many, many times when America has fallen short and treated African Americans and others as less than Americans. You can’t understand why Eugene Goodman, an African American Capitol Hill policeman who led the mob away from an open door leading into the Senate chamber during the insurrection if you don’t get the racial politics behind Wednesday’s events. In America, you can understand the good without learning about the bad.
One of my favorite poems is “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes. The poem is a back and forth between two voices, one talking about the wonderful thing America is, the other reminding the first voice that things were not always great. At the end, the two voices combine, offering a voice of not of cheery optimism, but of a hard-won hope:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!
We saw America on January 6. It was dark and ugly. But there is hope. Because while America is an angry mob rampaging the Capitol, I believe that out of this evil will arise a hope that might be battered, but isn’t deterred.
This is who we are as well.
This election wasn’t about race, and the post-election controversies weren’t about race. It wasn’t about race in Florida in 2000, or Ohio in 2004, or Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan in 2016. Close elections get heated. This time we had a perfect storm of broadened voting procedures, close elections, and a two-months-long presidential temper tantrum.
The violence was probably mostly white but who cares rioters against probably mostly white but who cares officers protecting probably mostly white but who cares Congressmen. It was about the certification of a white president-elect over his white opponent. Pence is white, and Kamala is (from what I hear) a cop, a Jamaican-Indian who managed to garner no votes in her presidential run. I only mention her background because it seems to matter to African-Americans, who also haven’t embraced her Jewish husband.
The violence last year, where people were shouting racial slogans, was about race. This wasn’t.Report
I think you’re right Pinky. But I also think it was about something worse. A concerted, cynical, evidence-free attack on the electoral process by an executive who has (also without evidence) asserted every election he has run in was rigged, including, most bizarrely, those he won. Now I didn’t think the muttering in 2016 was right either but let’s not let that unprincipled crap prevent us from calling a spade a spade.Report
A spade is a spade. (That feels weird to say in a thread about race.) Trump was wrong, to an extent that impeachment is a reasonable part of the conversation. The point of my comment wasn’t to restate my disgust at what Trump has said and done but to argue that framing this in terms of race isn’t reasonable. A thing can be wrong without being racist.
I could accept this article if it stuck with the point that African-Americans see the incident in light of historical oppression. It’s a bit of a pompous argument, but I wouldn’t have felt the need to comment on it. But this article says the event was about race, and that’s nonsense.Report
I’m sure there’s a snappy bridge quip in there somewhere about an elite suit calling a spade may be a spade, and a response of something like: no trump takes the hand, or something like that. Would probably make for a good tweet.Report
Too many clubs and too many misguided hearts. Not many diamonds.Report
Fair point (including that I didn’t think too hard about that expression before using it).
But I agree that there’s a lot of question begging in the classical sense that goes on with these assertions.Report
This election wasn’t about race, and the fact that Trump lied about the election being stolen in cities with large minority populations (Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta) is a complete coincidence.Report
Your point is that claims of fraud were about race, claims that were backed by 140 or so elected GOPers and about 75% of Republican voters. That’s a bit different. I totally understand that Pinky wasn’t aware of those facts when he wrote what he did.Report
Thank you for writing this Dennis. Keep speaking up.
Saying “I enjoy this” doesn’t really fit. I need it, though. I need to know about it. Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power.Report
The biggest error we Americans make is to imagine that all the struggles are ended and victory is safe.
It isn’t, and never will be.
The struggle to establish dignity and equality to all persons is going to be a never ending one.Report
I was just thinking about this very thing. I think it’s kind of like having a nice lawn. You can’t just throw out some grass seed and say, “done!”. No, you have to mow it. You have to pull weeds. You have to water it, you have to fertilize it sometimes.
So you can neglect it and have a weed-infested mess. Or you can cut it every day, roll it every week for 500 years and have one of those marvels that you see in England.Report
Really good piece Dennis. I too love my country but we have been terrible at times and not just long ago. To many people can’t integrate those two points. We aim high and strive to be great but to often have been as bad as any country has ever been. This is who we have been very recently: paranoid, racist and violent. We have to struggle against this forever.Report
Is it a bannable offense to say that I *don’t* love my country? Honestly, I don’t even know what the expression means. It’s not like my country is my kid or parent. It’s just the place I was born. One reason I don’t love my country is that the celebration of ignorance and arrogance we call “Trumpism” defines who we are as a people. Trump is often (conveniently) identified as the cause of Where We Are, but he isn’t. He’s just an opportunist.
Likewise, the pre-Trump years weren’t all that fucking great either. Except for the wealthy. The highlights of the post-Nixon presidencies are Reagan reducing taxes on the rich and Bill Clinton offshoring American manufacturing jobs, and George Bush illegally invading a foreign country.
I don’t love my country. But I do think that any hope for this country going forward includes a repudiation of populist insurrections against the worst-except-for-all-the-rest type of government we actually have. For better or worse, the politicians we elect and the policies they enact are *who we are* as a country. And the GOP has elected apologists – and in some cases accomplices – who support a coup on that system.
Don’t love those folks.Report
Moderation? Do curse words trigger mod? I wrote the word “fucking”.Report
I don’t think it should be a bannable offense. Though I do try to keep my flag waving immigrant grandmother in mind whenever I despair. There’s a reason people will still go through hell to get here. Like, what complaints do I really have that would resonate with my recently arrived Ethiopian neighbors?
Of course being better than the most dysfunctional and sclerotic parts of the world is a floor and not a ceiling. And to your second and third paragraph we really have a challenge here. We’ve reached the point where post truth populist insurrections and the totally-out-of-ideas bought and paid for post war establishment are running cover for each other. That’s not sustainable and I question the judgment (sanity?) of anyone with any sort of emotional attachment to either.Report
How long ago was “God Bless America? God Damn America!” scandalous?
12 years?
Golly.Report
I’m pretty sure it still is in a lot of places. You just wouldn’t know it from what’s on TV in any major media market.Report
“Scandalous” as in a few sound bites got quoted and suddenly Jeremiah Wright was a non-person. Goddam cancel culture.Report
I don’t think that it would be scandalous in the current year, though.
I mean, outside of a few suburbs.Report
Trump wasn’t a response to Obama?
Trump doesn’t remain a response to Obama?
Add: Trump’s algorithm in during the general and in the first few years was to simply *do the opposite of what Obama did*. Which inlcuded being white.Report
Oh, indeed he was a response to Obama.
He was a response to a lot of things, though.Report
I choose to read your comment as if it only included the first sentence to preclude attributing to you an insulting level of condescension.Report
He won the election because he was not Hillary.
He won the nomination because he was not Bush (nor Bush adjacent).
He presidented as if he were the anti-Obama… but that ain’t what got him to where he is.Report
Thanks for that insight Jaybird. You’ve changed my entire perception of the 2016 election!Report
Well, I’ll just get back to the current year, then.
I don’t think that Jeremiah Wright would be scandalous in it.Report
Who cares, though?
That you’re effectively lamenting the demise of the Jeremiah Wright scandal says something about you, though. Not sure what. I could make some guesses…Report
That’s not what I’m doing.
See it as more like taking note that an Iggy Pop song about heroin is showing up in a Cruise Line commercial.
I’m not lamenting the passing of a world where that song would have only have been known to fans of 70’s punk or 90’s indy films.Report
Even that’s condescending. I was alive when the song Back In Black was used by Cadillac in a commercial ya know.Report
True and he was also a fluke.Report
Our country needs more immigrants who *DO* love America to outpace the authoritarian Trumpist populists as well as the cynics like myself.
My perceptions of the US are corrupted by having lived here. 🙂Report
Just talk to North next time he’s commenting. That always makes me feel better.Report
Me too. 🙂Report
It is bannable to say you love the country just to get in it’s pants then ghost it the next day. Other then that F away. Do i love my wife because she is an objectively better human than others. No, i love her because i love her. I love my country for lots of reasons, none of them particularly rational. Does that mean the good ol US of A is better than other countries. No. I am more than happy to have people from Ghana, Luxembourg and Thailand to love their countries. Got a great Obama speech saying this kind of thing but it broke conservatives brains the first time.
America has been great while at the same time as being not all that great. The highlights of the pre trump years were lots of immigrants coming here and successfully building lives so their grandchildren could eventually turn into selfish ass regular old Americans. But we could use a lot more immigrants.Report
The highlights of the pre trump years were lots of immigrants coming here and successfully building lives so their grandchildren could eventually turn into selfish ass regular old Americans.
Truer words have never been spoken, err, written, my friend.Report
Hmmm, what triggers moderation anymore?
Anyway, I got a comment in mod.Report
Dude, I just spent 5 minutes pondering the question of what triggers political moderation in the context of greginak’s observation about extremism.Report
You’ve been an apologist for the GOP during the Trump presidency, yes? I understand your confusion.Report
I think the key is humility. To not overestimate or underestimate yourself. Believe in your principles, not yourself, and it’s easier to stay loyal to those principles.Report
Really? That’s your response?
Dude. You should be *apologizing* right about now.Report
I felt like my comment addressed both the big-picture issue of how to keep perspective across a difficult presidential term and the small-picture issue of how to keep perspective when someone makes a good-natured reply about misreading a comment.Report
“felt”Report
I feel like you could benefit from reading about “I” language as a tool for blunting criticism.Report
Pinky, I understand that you confuse your feelings for facts. I’m not sure why I need to read anything to clarify that point though. But if it’s a worthwhile topic maybe you could explain it to me in an OP-length essay about the origins and thought processes of Christian conservatism. It’d be nice for you to, so to speak, lay your cards on the table.Report
This will be a useful change of topic you can respond to Pinky:
The Party of Moderation yo.
I don’t know about you Pinky, but I’m just not seeing a lot of humility in the Republican party anymore. Thoughts and feelings?Report
You really have to wonder what their questions were and the timing of this… and those numbers add up to 94%.
That aside, I think the big question is what happens in a few years after Trump is gone and we’re rational again.
Do we keep on with the magic thinking and having our own personal “facts”? Do political parties get a way to push back on that? How and should they?
Like fish in water, we tend to not be aware of just how much magic thinking is around. Everything from “true communism has never been tried” to “the election was stolen” to “god”.Report
As the sports cliche goes, you are what your record says you are.Report
From La Times:
Biden plans early legislation to offer legal status to 11 million immigrants without it
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-15/biden-to-send-congress-bill-to-legalize-11-million-immigrants-who-lack-documentation
We are about to get a storm of totally not racist economic anxious Republican wailing, with some flurries of murderous cosplay.Report
Won’t it just founder and die on the rocks of a filibuster?Report
I haven’t heard about any violence yesterday. The press had been warning about it – “Q” is the 17th letter of the alphabet. This makes me optimistic about Inauguration Day.Report