Mary C. Curtis: The Measure of a Patriot
Posted at 11:52 pm, April 24th, 2008
In the much-criticized Pennsylvania debate, a voter challenged Barack Obama in a videotaped comment: “I want to know if you believe in the American flag.”
He doesn’t wear a flag pin, you know.
His former minister takes America to task for its racist past.
His wife says she’s never been so proud of America.
They are all judged and found wanting – when it comes to patriotism.
You can predict the Republican television ads if Obama is John McCain’s opponent: the war hero vs. the vaguely un-American stranger.
The strategy may not be new – but it’s as infuriating as ever.
It’s the default accusation.
Why aren’t black people more patriotic? Why do they hate America?
Get with the program – or else, we are warned.
Or else, what? We’ll prevent you from voting or buying a house in the neighborhood of your choice? Been there, done that.
And it didn’t make a bit of difference.
Since they landed on these shores, many in chains, African Americans have been trying to prove themselves, even when their efforts were met with indifference or hostility.
In every war, blacks have volunteered. Since, Crispus Attucks fell in the Boston Massacre, African Americans have fought for the right to fight for a country that sometimes treated them worse than captured prisoners of war. They did dirty jobs in segregated units, hoping to secure a more secure place in America the Beautiful.
Medgar Evers – shot down in front of his Mississippi home in June 1963 – was a World War II veteran, buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The sermons of the infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright – the former Marine –sometimes turned into rants that ignored America’s progress. But if you polled his congregation, you would find – I’m sure – the mothers and fathers, wives and husbands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama says he doesn’t need to wear a symbol when he believes in the real American Dream. It sounds simple – but it isn’t.
I yearn for a time when patriotism is measured – not by how high you hang your flag or how loudly you sing “God Bless America” – but by what you’re willing to give up and why.
Black people have long been willing to sacrifice their lives for the promise of America.
By that measure, they are the most patriotic citizens of all.
April 27th, 2008 at 7:29 am |
Very well said, Mary, but I hope you’ve had the chance to see the Bill Moyers Journal on Rev. Jeremiah Wright–a vindication of the ugly, unfounded attacks by America’s mostly white “main-stream media.”
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the so-called “main-stream media” are totaling ignoring the hour-long Bill Moyers Journal on Rev. Jeremiah Wright that PBS aired on Friday night. Nonetheless, I am infuriated over this fact. Why am I so incensed over this? Because the “main-stream media” have morphed, for the most part, into the “main-stream garbage.”
These character assassins took great pains to trash Rev. Wright, heretofore a highly respected pastor in both white and African American Christendom, for the ugly “sake” of a “good story.” These despicable fabricators ripped those totally out-of-context “inflammatory, anti-American” sound bites from a few of Rev. Wright’s sermons without any regard whatsoever to the true meaning and message of those sermons. Why? Because these video butchers and wannabe “pundits” don’t give a damn about truth and fairness. These garbage pickers are nothing more than purveyors of deception and lies.
I characterize their behavior as that of a lynch mob. Rev. Wright was the victim of a front-page, wide-screen, hi-def lynching.
And what do these lynchers do? They live in a world of abject ignorance and denial. They don’t dare search for or face the truth. Hence their choice to pretend as though the Bill Moyers Journal of Rev. Wright does not exist. And what does this encourage them to do? Obviously to perpetuate the monstrous lies and deceit of their creation. Welcome to American journalism. Ugly, is it not?