Sometimes Patriotism Looks Anti-American

I have been so upset about the goings on in the democratic primary lately that I have tried not to let myself hear any news. I don't want to hear any more about how Clinton surrogates are suggesting Obama is an undeserving affirmative action case. I don't want to hear any more about how unacceptable it is for Obama to be friends with a passionate critic of the U.S. government. But after pestering me and pestering me about it, Cole finally got me to watch Obama's Big Race Speech. If anything, he was too conciliatory for my taste, though he was politically just about as perfect as I can imagine anyone being on the subject. And wow, the media has been talking about the possibility that Black people and white people aren't completely honest about their feelings about race to each other's faces. That alone is a major rhetorical Obama victory as far as I'm concerned.

It's just really hard for someone who has studied a lot of nineteenth century American history (okay, me) to listen to white people complain that Black people aren't patriotic enough or are "anti-American" when they criticize the country. (Yeah, yeah, I know the whole Rev. Wright thing is all crazy-beyond-the-pale, but whatever. I am not shocked by it. I'm shocked that more people don't talk like that more often, frankly. People in general--especially non-white and otherwise less than perfectly privileged people--are far less angry and suspicious of the government than they ought to be, in my opinion.)

Anyway, the whole Obama thing has been steeping in my subconcious for a couple of days and then I watched the first two installments of HBO's John Adams mini-series and suddenly the light bulb went off and I realized what I wanted to tell you all. I wanted to tell you that one of the greatest orators in U.S. history had some "Anti-American"-but-patriotic things to say in his time, and his tireless leadership made America more American for the generations after him. Please take a minute and read one of my favorite things ever written by one of my favorite Dead American Heroes:

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" by Frederick Douglass, 1852.

I also wanted to tell ya'll why Hillary Clinton needs to bone up on her early suffragette history, but anovelista did it so beautifully (including most excellent references), that I see no reason to waste my time doing it a tenth as well.

Comments

[Nichelle]

Hi Shannon,

Thanks for the shout out (and the compliments) and your comments on my blog.

I don't have advanced degrees in history but I may as well. I'm a huge history nut and it drives me crazy when people don't have (or care to have) a clue about history and how it relates to us today. The willful, mean-spirited amnesia about this country is insane! The idea of a Gloria Steinem, a feminist icon that's supposed to "get it" writing that op-ed in the NY Times just galls me.

And all of the "anti-American" belly-aching truly drives me nuts. Thank God for the internet and YouTube. Without it, this would be a very different election.

[Islay]

Strangely enough, despite the fact that I am a Brit currently living in Thailand, doing voluntary work in an orphanage out here, I managed to catch Obama's speech being broadcast live by Fox news (which we get on TV here, for some reason). I caught it completely accidentally but sat through the whole thing because I'd never heard anything but sound bites from him before. It was fascinating - and I'd never heard an American politician (or a British one, for that matter) talk so much sense.

I guess being a fairly liberal, left-wing Scot, who was raised by sociologists and social historians in a country that, in general, is fairly left wing anyway, and also has a history of being the oppressed party in several wars and invasions, I'm very used to viewing the world from the point of view of someone with a consciousness of privilige and past oppression not just of my own people but of the people the British empire did terrible things to in the 18th and 19th centuries. Watching Fox news (and CNN, which we also get over here) has been a serious eye opener to the way the American media works, versus the much more central-left point of view of the BBC, which I was raised watching and listening to. I've found it difficult to believe the amount of right wing rhetoric that gets bandied about on these news channels that claim to be 'fair and balanced'. The reaction to the whole Wright affair, and to Obama's speech, made me want to laugh at the sheer ignorance of the people presenting the news - people who, even more frighteningly, claimed to know what the hell they were talking about. I'm so used to reading blogs by yourself and people with similar, (what I would consider) sane points of view, from Americans who understand what white privilige is, who know the history of oppression in America and in other countries, that it was a shock to be exposed to these apparently popular news channels.

It really just makes me want to demand 'WHAT LIBERAL BIAS?!' the next time they start winging about it on Fox...

[Regine]

Thank you!