What if tell our children about the violent displacement, slaughter, kidnapping, and killing of Indigenous people? What if we tell them about the plunder of the land, the land blessed and borrowed but never called "country" by these ancient native tribes? What if we tell our children about assimilation as it simmered in a melting pot of forced European colonization?
What if we tell our children about the abduction and enslavement of Africans? Tell them how they were torn from familiar land, chained, and tossed onto wooden ships, which then tossed on the wide-open stormy sea. Of unimaginable unfamiliarity followed by generation upon generation upon generation of brutal slavery. Of king cotton capitalism, of excessive greed, of building our cities for free, of violence (so much violence), and century upon century upon century of made-up skin-deep social hierarchies. Of whips and horses and dogs, of nooses and nightsticks and knees, of fire hoses, handcuffs, jail cells, and guns.
What if we ask our children how it would make them feel to be sold? To stand upon a wooden stage and bear witness to strangers as they bid on their bare bodies. How it would feel to be trapped in bondage - in all that hopelessness, and in all that rage.
What if we tell our children about lynchings by mobs of wildly ignorant white people? What if we tell them about the humiliation of Jim Crow? What if we tell them about the humiliation of minstrel shows? What if we play for them Nina Simone's haunting version of Strange Fruit and show them films like Selma? What if we tell them about the buses and the beatings and the church bombings and the burning crosses and the white-cloaked KKK? What if we tell them about Rosewood and Tulsa and Ruby Bridges? What if we tell them about Emmett Till and Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McCane, and Ahmaud Arbery? What if we tell them the list is too long for anyone to learn. What if we tell them that they are citizens in a violent racist nation?
[It is important to mention that I am suggesting that the truth be revealed, but carefully, with scaffolding. Imagine a mural painted with rollers and wide brushes for years before dipping slender brushes into wet paint and sharpening our country's story with details.]
What if we remove our American glory and replace it with the raw reality? What if we stopped reading only the History books of our forefathers, our white oppressive ancestors, and instead gathered the defiant stories of our past's diverse oppressed persons?
I wish we could suppress our undeserved patriotism and instead invest in humility, humanity, and authenticity. I want us to be ordinary and kind for awhile. I want us to be humble. Meek even. Let us, white people, apologize for the barbarity of this country's contradictory creators. Our revolutionary war was fought for freedom. The freedom to torture, enslave, kill, and take from others. This "great country" was founded on hypocrisy.
"Yes, but", you say, "slavery was a long time ago."
"Slavery was a long time ago."
"Slavery was a long time ago."
"Slavery was a long time ago."
If you say it over and over and over again, it will become like truth.
Wait.
Who said that?
Ah yes, Hitler.
"Yes, but," you say, "America is a young country."
"America is a young country."
"America is a young country."
"America is a young country."
Your excuses are contradictory. Your excuses are embarrassing me.
Let us lay our nation's sins upon the table and stare at them for a while. Hold the papers of our past, ALL the papers of our past, and simply accept them, and then vow to do better, vow to be better.
What if we tell our children how to make amends? How to avoid war. How to allow peace. It isn't enough to mumble "sorry" and expect everyone to forgive and forget.
"We were wrong. We are wrong. There is still so much inequality. I am sorry. I am learning, and I am paying your reparations through careful donations. "
If we were honest. If we did vow to acknowledge the truth of America. If we were humble and devoted ourselves to making amends, then I would be a proud American. If the Earth (the land, air, water, animals, people, and plants) were placed above the profits of a few deep pockets, then I would fly the biggest and brightest, and most beautiful American flag I could find.
But until that day, I will work.
Come, children, come see. You will not be like me, seeing at 36 that my empathy has been shallow and narrow, my understanding incomplete. Instead, you will learn the complexities of this place so that one day you may help to mend it.
