[I’ve written
a good deal in the last few months about the topic
of critical patriotism, a central focus of my recently completed
fourth book. So for this year’s 4th of July series I wanted to
highlight a handful of distinct examples of perspectives and visions of such
critical patriotism. Please share your own nominees for critical patriots, past
and present, for a crowd-sourced weekend post full of fireworks!]
On the
historical echoes for a controversial sermon, and the subsequent speech that
models critical patriotism far more successfully.
The controversy
almost seems quaint in retrospect, at least in comparison with the
Birther nonsense and secret
Muslim conspiracy garbage and other uglinesses that have been thrown at
Barack Obama throughout his presidency, but in early 2008 the debate over
Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s angry, critical sermons about race and religion in
America was at fever pitch. As usual these days, much of that debate was based
on simplified soundbites or outright misinformation, as illustrated by this
piece in which CNN correspondent Roland Martin listened to and provided a
transcript of the whole of Wright’s infamous “God Damn America” sermon
(actual title: “Confusing God and Government”). Yet even with the full context,
there’s no doubt that Wright’s sermon represents an extreme perspective on the
nation’s histories and identity, both in its specific details (such as the
assertion that the government had known about the Pearl Harbor attacks in
advance) and in its overarching arguments (exemplified by lines like “God Damn
America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long
as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme").
Those extremes
in Wright’s speech and perspective quite directly echo much of the speech with
which I opened this week’s series, Frederick
Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Take this paragraph
from Douglass: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument,
is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would,
today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering
sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is
not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the
earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the
nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the
hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man
must be proclaimed and denounced.” Yet there are relevant contextual
differences between the two addresses that shed a less positive light on
Wright’s: the obvious historical ones (that Douglass was speaking in the period
of a slave system into which he had himself been born); but also a key
distinction in audience (that Douglass was speaking directly to a multi-faceted
American community, challenging them to engage collectively with his ideas,
while Wright was quite literally preaching to the choir and thus in far more of
an echo chamber).
We don’t have to
go back a century and a half to find a speech that models critical patriotism
with more nuance and effectiveness than Wright’s sermon, though. I wrote at
some length in
this post about Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech,
which he delivered in March 2008 in direct response to the unfolding Reverend
Wright controversy. Although the speech originated and opens with that specific
context, it quickly moves into a far more wide-ranging and deep reflection on
race in both Obama’s life and identity and in America more broadly, one that
uses a blunt examination of such issues and histories to argue for how we can
continue moving toward that titular more perfect union. At times progressive
critics of Obama’s presidency have wished that he would get angry more
frequently or openly, but I think the contrast between Wright’s (justifiable
but still to my mind limiting) anger and Obama’s speech illustrates precisely the
complex balance (in perspective, in tone, in argument, in ideas) that comprises
Obama’s critical patriotism. He’s offered so many models of that vital perspective
over these 8 years, just one more reason we need to make
sure not to follow him with Trump’s ridiculously simplistic
“Make America Great Again” style of patriotism.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one more
time: what do you think? Critical patriots you’d nominate?
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