Whee – Me!

A man walked through the Speedway gas station lot yesterday, Independence Day. He wore a straw sun hat that had a couple of little American flags stuck into the hat band. He was shoving his change in his pocket as he was getting into his SUV. As he did this, something fell on the ground, unbeknown to him. I couldn’t tell if it was a receipt or a dollar bill so I got out of the car (the loved one, Karen, was filling the tank – we have an agreement: whoever’s driving pumps the gas) and trotted toward his vehicle.

As I neared it, I noticed he had Vietnam veteran’s plates. I pointed out the piece of paper, which turned out to be a receipt. He jumped out of his SUV and thanked me profusely as if I’d recovered the missing deed to his house.

One of the first things you learn about the near south is that people treat everyday encounters with strangers like reunions with long lost relatives. Had this occurred back in Chicago, I could have expected either to be ignored or a terse “thanks.” This fellow, though, clasped my hand and began telling me what a wonderful day it was, how lucky we all are to be alive, isn’t this the greatest country on Earth, and Jesus has made it all possible.

For a quick minute, I thought he might invite home to meet his wife and have dinner.

After trying to say goodbye to him three separate times, I finally was able to extricate myself from his neighborly grip. He got back into his SUV, began backing out of the parking spot, then rolled down his window to wave farewell to me once again. In the process, he almost slammed into another car that was just pulling in.

It was a typical encounter with a god-fearing, patriotic gentleman of the south.

What struck me, though, is that he was a black man. This chance meeting got me to thinking how odd it is that so many black men and women love this country so much.

A Rally Of Patriots, August 1963

When some angry sermons delivered by Barack Obama’s ex-pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made the rounds earlier this year, many white commentators were aghast. Their reaction couldn’t have been too different from that following a German Bundist rally in 1939 or a neo-Nazi hatefest in 1977. You’d have thought Wright (and, by extension, Obama) was advocating the mass enslavement of American citizens.

Barack Obama (L) and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Before All The Hysteria

I found nothing particularly alarming or upsetting about anything Wright said, save for the notion that AIDS might have been created by the US government to attack black people. Then again, when you recall the Tuskegee syphilis study scandal, you can’t blithely dismiss any such theory.

In fact, I found Wright’s comments on America and race to be right on target. He talked about how stupid US foreign policy decisions contributed to the atmosphere that led to the 9/11 attacks – I’m with him there. He called for blacks to pull together to foster cultural, spiritual and economic unity – natch. And when he said “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn American for as long as she acts like she is god and she is supreme,” my reaction was, Amen!

A few centuries of slavery, a hundred years of Jim Crow, and some sixty years of separate but equal ought to have radicalized any thinking black human being. Yet, yesterday I met a black man who was so enthralled with his country that he wore American flags attached to his hat. Not only that, he had fought in an undeclared war for that nation.

Not-So-Ancient History

Why?

The only explanation I can offer is that black people have been able to distinguish between the evils that exist in our society and its potential for eliminating them. Sure, some of the working concepts of slavery were written into the US Constitution, but many of the revolutionaries who created the US loathed the system of human “ownership.” Thomas Jefferson, for one, although a slaveholder himself, called slavery the “great political and moral evil” in his treatise, “Notes On Virginia.”

We humans are an inconsistent, contradictory lot. The so-called “Founding Fathers” were as mixed up as any other gang of guys. They were smart enough to embrace democracy but too obtuse to ensure the participation of blacks and women in that system.

It’s clear there was a notion running through the young country that although slavery existed, its continued existence wasn’t long for the US and this world. A nation firmly and unanimously committed to slavery for the indefinite future wouldn’t have have included the words “all men are created equal” in its Declaration of Independence.

Perhaps many black men and women have clung to the dream of the US despite its temporal realities. Can it be that they love what this nation can become despite hating what it often is? If so, they’ve displayed a sophistication of thought that’s far beyond that of the white commentators who had conniption fits when they heard the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Happy Independence Day!

Big Mike