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Like many who are identifiably African-American, my feelings of patriotism are complicated. When I heard General Colin Powell say on a recent “Meet the Press” appearance that some prominent members of his own Republican party “still sort of look down on minorities,” referencing a former governor’s statement that President Obama “is shuckin’ and jivin’” and the “Birther” movement spreading falsehoods about the president’s citizenship, I pause and question what is going on in this country.
In passing, Powell also chided former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for his now-famous dismissal of 47 percent of population as takers who refuse to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” When I heard Romney’s dismissal of the 47 percent, a sizeable number of whom are minorities who Romney presumed wouldn’t be voting for him, I similarly had to question how far we have come as a nation.
Yet the words of the late Daniel “Chappie” James, a Tuskegee Airman and the first African-American to attain the rank of four-star general in the Air Force, continue to ring in my ears. Enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1993, his bio on the Hall of Fame’s website quotes an essay he wrote in 1967 after he was awarded the George Washington Freedom Medal.
In the essay, James wrote that despite this nation’s sordid legacy of racial discrimination, “This is my country and I believe in her, and I believe in her flag, and I’ll defend her, and I’ll fight for her and serve her. If she has any ills, I’ll stand by her and hold her hand until in God’s given time, through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the entire nation, things are made right again.’”
And so it is “Chappie” James in the past and Barack Obama in the present who remind me that those sowing seeds of discord and division among “We the People” do not have sole rights to what defines America.
However, part of me hoped that Romney was alone in his expressed disdain for almost half of the U.S. population. Yet some prominent conservative voices doubled-down on Romney’s “47 percent” commentary in the wake of Obama’s victory at the polls, making statements indicating that the America they have come to know and love has been irreparably damaged by the “takers” who propelled Obama to victory. In his second inaugural address today, Obama addressed these critics directly.
