One America
In August 2007, I wrote a letter to our readers entitled “One America”, a term I used to describe the way we veterans see our country: non-denominational, indivisible, and uncorrupted by political identity. We look at our troops and cohorts and see uniforms, ranks, names, and personalities, not electoral votes or color-coded maps. They are Americans, or trying to become Americans, and that’s the only description they want.
Of the key themes in the rhetoric of President Elect Obama, from transformational change to self-reliance and self-actualization, the one that has resonated with me most has been his earnest belief in our country as a whole entity with a single soul, as One America.
Critics have called Obama a celebrity, a pop culture icon upon whom young Americans were naively projecting their own dreams and aspirations, a politician who offered a fairy-tale of hope, instead of a CV of legislative accomplishments. But what critics failed to appreciate was that Americans weren’t projecting onto Obama, they were identifying with him, because he was describing his vision of a single America, and lo and behold, it turns out most Americans want that as well.
A Call to Serve and to Act
I have served my country under a variety of leaders, not all of whom I voted for. But I cherished the opportunity to serve my country no matter who led it, and relished the fact that whatever leader was elected, to my preference or not, had been fairly selected by a majority of my countrymen.
Early Tuesday morning I thought about how no matter who won the election, my duty was to return to the service of my country and that I would do so with no regard for the politics of government, choosing only to focus on the problems and opportunities I could help effect. This attitude is common among veterans.
Likewise, I hope that all Americans realize that today, Nov 5th, is D-Day. Liberal, conservative, centrist: the election is just the beginning of the democratic process, not the end, and in fact, the election is the part that requires the least self-discipline and the least endurance. Democrats can’t just kick back and say: “I elected Obama, problem solved.” Nor can Republicans say: “My guy didn’t get in- I have no voice now.” Negative. It’s time to ruck up, find a problem you care about, and start the national dialogue. Are you going to conserve energy or are you going to wait for someone to raise the gasoline tax? Are you going to volunteer at a tutoring program or hope someone pumps some money into your school district? Are you going to live within your means or count on Congress to bail out your debt? Are you going to enlist in the military, or hope Bin Laden calls it quits?
It’s our country- not some politician’s and not the other party’s.
The Referendum on Racism and Grievance
Like many Americans, this election has been one of the most important experiences of my life. A large part of that is because this election did something no census or opinion poll has ever done: give us a unique and effective perspective on how race is perceived in America.
Whites represent about 75% of all Americans, and Barack Obama won 43% of their votes, which is more than every democratic candidate since and including Carter in ‘80, except for Clinton in ’96, who also won 43%. In addition, Obama won states like Iowa and New Hampshire that are nearly 100% white.
This matters for two major reasons:
1. This election serves as a referendum on the notion that America is an inherently racist country and that race still prevents Americans from evaluating each other on content and character instead of skin color. Are the legacies of slavery and xenophobia persistent? Yes. Do most humans, American or otherwise, still harbor prejudices, ranging from subtle to overt? Indeed. But will Americans’ prejudices prevent them from selecting the candidate they believe best qualified to lead our nation? Resoundingly no.
Consider the following: what is the most extreme, high-stakes test you could concoct to measure how Americans view the characters and capabilities of two strangers- one black and one white? What better test than to ask which they would elect to be the leader of their nation, especially in the most adverse and challenging times in recent memory- during war, recession, and declining influence? To protect the survey, you would conduct it in total anonymity. And that is what this election has been to me: a referendum on the commonly espoused notion that Americans are too blinded by racial motives to judge each other fairly.
2. Last week, I saw part of a film on the city’s public broadcasting channel that caught my attention. It was called Indoctrinate U, a compelling documentary about the prevalence of liberal crusading on university campuses and the condonation of bad behavior towards, and intolerance of, conservative opinions and student groups. In addition to serving as a wakeup call, it reminded me of the proselytizing about hawkish Neo-Conservatism, and the indictment of liberal points of view that I had witnessed in the military.
The part of the film that I found most interesting was an interview with John McWhorter (at the time a professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley- now at Columbia). McWhorter was discussing a phenomenon he describes as the "cult of victimology", which as best as I can explain, is the characterization of the modern African American experience as exclusively unfair, persistently oppressive, and essentially unchangeable, thus compelling African American youth to think of themselves as aggrieved and to nurture that grievance instead of solving it.
I took several African American studies classes in college, one of which was an in depth look at slavery that greatly informed the way I perceived modern American race relations. To be sure, it’s impossible to try to understand the modern black experience without first understanding slavery, but after the McWhorter interview, I realized that I had also been deprived of another point of view- that in spite of slavery, in spite of racism, black Americans can be as upwardly mobile as they want, provided they are willing to define a realm of possibility that extends beyond the classical boundaries of grievance.
This election is a case-in-point to McWhorter’s assertion, and I heard the same denouncement of grievance by African American reporters and politicians throughout the day on MSNBC. When an African American named Barack Hussein Obama, raised by a single mother on food stamps, portrayed by his opponents as a “socialist” intent on extending the welfare state (wink wink), can be elected president of the United States- the most powerful leadership role in the free world- the self-imposed boundaries of grievance have been shattered.
It's D-Day. Time to roll up our sleeves.
Further Reading and Viewing: 2 Dinar: One America Exit Polls (NYT) Losing The Race, Self-Sabotage In Black America (excerpt) by John McWhorter Indoctrinate U