It's hard for me to watch all the frothing red, white and blue nuttiness every year. Flapping plastic flags on everything in sight...hotdogs, apple pies, Uncle Sam caricatures and all the Rah-Rah, USA, we'll-kick-your-ass-any-day fervor charging the air. Ever since I was a kid, I have always felt so disconnected from it all. And no matter how old I become, I can't help but think of what my own American Indian and African ancestors were going through as this nation was being "founded." "All men are created equal" was far from the true phrase it should've been in the Declaration of Independence. And then there are always those troubling racist phrases like "merciless Indian savages" in the Declaration of Independence and referring to African slaves and their descendants as "three-fifths" of a human being in the Constitution. And women of any race didn't have a welcoming spot at the table yet, either.
I remember reading the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as a child and wondering why there were such brutal contradictions. I never felt like those pieces of paper had much to do with me. I didn't feel like jumping on top of a table and waiving a flag or singing patriotic songs. Those divisive, racist statements hit hard like my father's fists. I remember the first experiences with racism I had as a little kid from a predominantly black parochial city school traveling to the far-flung suburbs of Chicago to visit another parochial school for performances and competitions. I'll never forget the first time I heard the words "nigger" or "red nigger" aimed directly at me coming from the mouths of the white kids in front of me. It was the early 1970's and things were still very stilted and segregated in many suburban areas where "white flight" had been the order of the day as more blacks, American Indians and Latinos had settled into Chicago neighborhoods which had once been all-white enclaves. And now all these decades later, it still floors me to see the racism and inequities that still happily flourish in the times we're living in. And the blissful ignorance knows no bounds -- or racial barriers.
You know what else I can't stop thinking of??? I moved to New Orleans over 10 years ago and first lived with a cousin in an area outside the city called Metairie before moving into my own place in New Orleans. If you've never heard of it, one of its claims to fame was being the residence of a renowned white nationalist/supremacist and klansman and electing him to state office in the early 90's. He was actually running for Louisiana's First Congressional District when I arrived in 1999. I still remember the sickening lump in my stomach as my friends and I drove past the "Welcome to New Orleans" highway sign and saw one of his large campaign signs directly alongside it. And when we finally hit the city limits of Metairie, there were "stars n' bars" confederate flags dotting lawn after lawn after lawn after lawn....and a massive confederate flag draped across the rooftop of some store or business that was all-too-visible from an Expressway off-ramp. Absolute madness. I felt like I'd walked into an episode of the Twilight Zone...or off a Freedom Riders bus in 1961. And people wonder why I get pissed when I see clueless people walking around town with "rebel flag" belt buckles, shirts and other crap who are completely ignorant of what that flag means to blacks who fought hard against jim crow and segregation as well as the white racists and other southern folks who hold the fervent belief that "the south will rise again."
From the beginning, this troubled train was off its center. Flooded with lies, greed and the blood of genocides. And now here we all stand as descendants inheriting some majorly dysfunctional, corrupt legacies. We need to make sense of the madness we're living in. All of us have a stake in how to get this train on the right tracks and where its journey will go -- ALL of us...every color...every gender....all sexualities...all economic classes, abilities, ethnic origins, religions, etc. have a part to play.
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