Whose America Is It, Anyway?

We Americans need to get a grip.

Many white Americans identify with the Pilgrims, with Jamestown settlers, with our Founding Fathers.  But most white Americans are descendants of much more recent immigrants.  Most white Americans' ancestors did NOT arrive on these shores via Plymouth Rock, most white Americans’ ancestors did NOT fight in our Revolutionary War, most white Americans’ ancestors arrived here in the last 150 years.  But even these children of immigrants choose to identify with Puritans rather than later immigrants.  Many white Americans would like to ignore the black experience, even though the first generation of blacks arrived here well before their European ancestors.  Many white Americans would like to ignore the indigenous experience, even though they populated the Americas for 10,000 years before the first Europeans set foot on these shores.

We must remember that white Europeans settled here for the first time in Jamestown, VA in 1607 and Plymouth Rock, MA in 1620.  The first black African arrived in Jamestown, involuntarily, in 1619. The white population of America grew to 250,000 souls by 1700.   Our Founding Fathers were multi-generational aristocratic Americans who were born here around 1725, 100 years after the first white European settlers.  The white population of America in 1776 was 2.5 million.  The 1800’s bore witness to waves of immigrants to these shores: Irish, German and Asian.  Our population in 1890 reached 63 million.  Ellis Island began processing European immigrants in 1892; 40% of today’s American citizens were welcomed at Ellis Island, 40%!  We are MASSIVELY an immigrant nation, even if you only count white European ancestry.  Only a tiny number of us can trace our roots back to Plymouth Rock or Jamestown.  Very few of us can trace our roots back to the birthday of white European America, July 4th, 1776.  Most African Americans have roots that run deeper than most white Americans.   Most Mexican Americans have roots that run deeper than most white Americans.   All native Americans …, well, you get my drift.

But many white Americans have signed onto a jaundiced view of American history.  When Columbus arrived, the red population of the American continents was around 60 million.  American history books treat these people as obstacles to white European settlement (even though the story of Thanksgiving portrays a welcoming and generous people, unlike the Europeans who needed land to settle on).  Our history books don’t dwell on 250 years of African slavery and 150 years of systemic racism that was in many cases worse than slavery.  Our history books whitewash non-white American history.

I am NOT suggesting that the United States, the white United States (with occasional help from folks like Jim Thorpe and Jesse Owens), is not an incredibly great country, especially when we are at our best.   I am suggesting that we need to stop pretending that we are ONLY a great and good country.  We are, with justice, immensely proud of our Revolutionary period, when we showed the world a better future, with our ideas and our words and our actions, and with our military savvy.  We are, with justice, immensely proud of our economic expansion, even if most of those spoils went to robber barons, and still do.  We are, with justice, immensely proud of our participation in World War II – the Greatest Generation – and of our example to the world of an "activist" government that created jobs for people whose lives went belly up through no fault of their own in the Great Depression.  But.  Nearly 150 years after we amended the U.S. Constitution to give citizenship and the right to vote to former slaves, nearly 75 years after Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey broke the color line in baseball, we are not done fighting the Civil War, not done with racism, even if some say we are.

I don’t want to dismantle the Washington Monument (George was a slave holder; though he freed his slaves in his will).  I don’t want to destroy, or even deface, the Lincoln Memorial (Abe believed that Africans were inferior to whites, and would have been happy to pay for their one way tickets back to Africa; though Frederick Douglas changed his mind about black inferiority).  I don’t want us to unteach Jefferson’s immortal words because he had a 35-year affair with a slave of his, with his “property.”  We have a checkered past and we need to teach it all.  We have enormous accomplishments that we have every right to be proud of; and we have more than our share of bad moments (some of them having nothing to do with race or immigration), and we need to teach them.

There are crazies on both sides of this debate.  My suggestion is that we need to pay more attention to our history, we need to actually listen in history class or read a book or two to catch up with what we missed in grade school and high school.  If we could all celebrate the things we have a right to be proud of, and acknowledge our mistakes and commit to being better going forward, there would be no “debate” (because the debate depends on folks who can only see one side’s story).  Indeed, most white Americans have MUCH more in common with non-white Americans than they do with the storied men and women of our glorious past.

We need to stop living in Fantasyland!  Reality is tougher, but it is our ONLY way forward as a people.

As an aside, this “debate” is being energized by our president and by conservative talk radio.   If these folks are your source of news, you need to understand that you are living in an Echo Chamber, a perfectly human thing to do, as listening to the other guy can often cause physical upset.  But staying in your Echo Chamber is deadly to your soul – to our nation’s soul – that depends so much on loving your neighbor as yourself.