It’s about time America reframed its history
Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the “#MeToo” movement and Black Lives Matter, America finds itself in the middle of a crash course in reality — historically, not its favorite subject.
In the case of the pandemic, I imagine health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci must feel like Copernicus trying to convince his contemporaries that the Earth is not the center of the universe. And judging from the number of Americans today that refuse to follow health guidelines to social distance and wear masks, I guess they must believe the universe revolves around them.
Or maybe they believe politics trumps science — that America’s myth of invincibility and exceptionalism touted by our president will protect them from disease and death. Evidently, many feel no sense of responsibility if they infect others. But no matter their rationalization, the pandemic’s whirlwind of reality spinning across the country proves that personal and political opinions amount to nothing but dust.
Another lesson in reality comes in the form of the Black Lives Matter movement that has placed under the national microscope the twined strands of injustice and myth found in the very DNA of our nation’s conception. While the founding fathers’ aspirational ideals are indeed noble and virtuous, the men themselves seem either disingenuous or self-deceptive. Declaring that “all men are created equal” but excluding women, Blacks and whites without property from that definition is a contradiction in not only words but conscience.
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall observed this hypocrisy rooted in our nation’s foundation: “When the founding Fathers used the phrase [We the People] in 1787, they did not mean women or Blacks, or those without property since these groups were not allowed to vote.” And John Quincy Adams noted in his diary that the Constitution was “calculated to increase the influence, power, and wealth of those who have any already.”
This disconnect between promise and practice has indoctrinated too many of us to believe the lies we tell ourselves. Today too many of us measure patriotism by public oaths, pledges of allegiance and standing for the national anthem. But as long as our nation violates its founding ideals, such demonstrations amount to mere lip service of them.
And just when the nation may finally be facing some ugly truths of its past and present, President Donald Trump claims that America’s founding fathers are being “unfairly treated.” It’s telling, however, that in the wake of George Floyd’s death, some, like the president, focus solely on those protesters that destroyed private property but never mention the circumstances of Mr. Floyd’s death or the historical context of systemic racism. Ironically, the president models the hypocrisy of our founders, who also considered the protection of private property that included their Black slaves, more important than the protection of human rights guaranteed by the Constitution they had authored. We have never escaped our original hypocrisy.
Instead, we like to rationalize away our collective responsibility for slavery and its present repercussions by claiming: “Oh, that’s ancient history. We had nothing to do with that, so we shouldn’t be held accountable for it.” But as William Faulkner wisely observed, and perhaps many of us are just beginning to understand, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Consider the disingenuous comeback by some white people to the slogan “Black Lives Matter”: “All Lives Matter.” It’s as if they were unaware that their lives, in particular white men’s lives, have always mattered more than anyone else’s in America. The reality is that they feel racism no longer exists simply because they have never been its victim. In fact, some whites audaciously claim the Black Lives Matter movement represents a case of reverse discrimination. But whether the prejudice behind this claim is blind or cynical, it’s stunningly ahistorical after 400 years of persecution of, and injustice to, Black Americans.
Instead, many of us cherrypick our history. For instance, while many Americans enthusiastically take collective pride and credit for America’s victory over genocidal Germany in WWII, we brush off any shame or responsibility for our collective genocide of American Natives and the theft of their homeland. It’s precisely this whitewashed view of our history that has insulated us from the experience of its innocent victims.
The president seems the personification of this disingenuous denial of reality. His campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is but a nostalgic backward look to an America airbrushed of its ugly legacy of injustice toward minorities. His refusal to admit his public lies, racial dog whistles and attacks upon women parallels our nation’s refusal to face the corruption of our nation’s ideals. And denial has proved as virulent to the nation’s political, moral and spiritual health as the spread of COVID-19 is to our citizens’ physical health.
But now with reality rising into our nation’s collective consciousness, we have an opportunity to remove our blinders and to wear our masks; to accept responsibility for both the glory and the shame of our paradoxical history; and to fulfill the promise of our founders’ words.