THE PARADOX OF PATRIOTISM
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
I can’t wait to get my hot little hands on Professor Roger Wilkins’ new
book. The former Washington Post journalist, anti-apartheid activist, and
history professor at George Mason University has written a “reconsideration”
of four of Virginia’s founders – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison, and George Mason. At a time when all these men are getting their
reputations kicked around (and justifiably so, in my opinion), I can’t wait
to read what Wilkins has to say about them.
His book is titled Jefferson’s Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the
Dilemma of Black Patriotism (Beacon Books, 163 pages, $20) because one of
Thomas Jefferson’s earliest memories is being carried around on a pillow by a
slave. Gag. That’s our history, though. Folks being carried on pillows.
Folks carrying pillows. The difference in perspective is sometimes so wide
that the notion of black patriotism is an anathema to folk like me.
I stepped into a bunch of unpatriotic doo-doo a few weeks ago when I told
a Fox News anchor that I do not pledge the flag. I left the country, going
to Norway for an economist’s conference, and came back to find myself on the
front page of Washington’s conservative newspaper, The Washington Times.
They quoted me, correctly, as saying the pledge of allegiance was nothing
more than a lie, and then it was on. My assistant sent me email saying that
the phones were ringing off the hook.
When I came back home, I went back on Fox to talk with Sean Hannity, the
conservative half of Hannity and Colmes, about the flag and me. Of course,
Mr. Hannity was outraged that any American would not cross her hand over her
heart and repeat the hypocritical words, “one nation.” Whenever we come up
on the Fourth of You Lie, I think of Frederick Douglas and his masterful
oration, “The meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro.” Pledge the flag?
I think not!
Still, I have to admit that all (and maybe even most) black folks don’t
feel the same way I do. And, knowing dozens of black vets, I have to admit
that many of them describe themselves as patriots. I think, often, of the
term Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry coined, “the paradox of
loyalty” to describe the way black folk fought for the right to fight, and
then came home to fight again. Black veterans clearly feel the paradox of
patriotism more keenly than most. But it is a paradox that is felt by many.
Even as a patriot, must one embrace the founders of a state like
Virginia, a slave state that still flies the Confederate flag whenever it is
convenient? A state that, until recently celebrated Confederate History
Month? Many say these founders have to be put in context with their times,
but even in their times they must have know that it was wrong to enslave
other human beings. I am familiar with all of the arguments of the day – do
we found a nation, and sacrifice slaves, or struggle against slavery and
sacrifice the nation? In some ways, they may have done both. They sacrificed
slaves in the short run, but in the long run their biases may have imperiled
the nation and left us with unfinished business that no one has the stomach
for tackling.
I wonder about the paradox of patriotism and the different ways that
African Americans and whites see the world when I reflect on the e-mail I got
from people about pledging the flag. Whites wondered why I was not grateful
for the opportunity to live in the United States, and opined that I should
leave the country if I could not embrace it. I was described as hateful,
racist, disgusting, and stupid for not pledging the flag. The one e-mail (of
about 50) I got from someone who identified themselves as an African American
said “you go girl”. Close colleagues wondered why I wanted to slip into flag
doo-doo. “If white folks aren’t anything else, they are patriots,” a fellow
columnist told me.
What kind of patriots are they, really, though? Are they committed to
the notion of “one nation,” or the maintaining their inherited privileges?
Are they even willing to look at the world somewhat differently, to
understand what it is like to carry the pillow, not be pampered by it? Or do
they hide behind the shrug of “that was then and this is now”? Such a shrug
might be acceptable if they’d get off their history and out of their flag,
but as long as some folks wrap themselves in the supremacy of the
Confederacy, others will view them as alien, closed beings who are
anti-patriots.
Someone ought to write about the paradox of the Confederacy, about the
treason involved in flying a flag of a vanquished nation. Until that digging
gets done, though, we’ll have to be content to consider Wilkins, an American
patriot, whose book attempts to place slave-holding Virginians in some kind
of context.