america

Disclaimer: I'm just me. This is not the work of a political expert.

Charlottesville. Everyone knows what happened there recently, and I have no need to replay the incident. And I have written about race and growing up in Virginia in a past blogpost --while that blogpost had nothing to do with the Civil War, it had everything to do with the Civil War. So does this one. It has to do with the Revolutionary War. It has to do with the founding of the United States, and what that means today.

There is no one America, and there never has been.

I've thought long and hard about how to explain 'American' to friends who don't know or martians who might randomly drop from the sky. The truth is, in order to explain 'American', you have to be willing to give whatever adjective or example you like and there will be plenty of adjectives and examples that contradict what you say. 

There have been families here since the founding in the 17th-Century; there are families who arrived yesterday; there are families who have been here since centuries before the founding.

There are families who came here for economic opportunity; there are families whose ancestors were brought here against their will.

There are people who descend from one race; there are people who descend from more than one race and may not be aware; there are people who descend from many races.

There are people who can afford gold-plated toilets; there are people who clean those gold-plated toilets and may not be able to afford rent; there are people who cannot fathom why anyone would need a gold-plated toilet (the vast majority, I would assume).

There are people who speak English; there are people who don't speak English.

There are people of all religions; there are people of more than one religion (yes, it is possible); there are people of no religion.

There are people who love jazz and country music; there are people who love jazz, but not country; there are people who love country, but not jazz; there are people who tolerate both; there are people who hate music in general.

Etc.

And yet, they are all American.

We are a nation of contrasts. We are a study in cognitive dissonance.

When I read people saying about what happened in Charlottesville, "This is not what America stands for" --it's not entirely true. 

Since the beginning, we have been a nation founded on high ideals like equality and freedom and opportunity, but we have also been a nation that --in practice --was founded on inequality and the lack of freedom and opportunity of some.

Going forward, we need to have hard conversations and acknowledge that. This may not be what we want America to stand for, but it is part of what America has been and is. It needs addressed. The one glimmer of hope in all of this horrible situation is that it is being addressed out in the open.

I have no answers, but I hope all of us --from leadership down --can try and move towards our ideals, so that we can in the future say it and mean it: this [hatred, fear and oppression] is not what America stands for. We can't truly be the Land of the Free until we figure it out.