Trump’s and ICE’s treatment of immigrants reminded me of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty; the linkage within me between Roanoke’s Black Community and the world; and the book entitled, The Ugly American.
“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Emma Lazarus
Subconsciously, I was linked with the world’s humanity because of my early life experiences. I grew to adulthood during an era with dramatic and clear disparities between America’s professed creed and the way people like me were treated. That treatment was perpetrated, perpetuated, and tolerated for centuries by our national, state and local governments, as well as by religious entities. Despite that reality, however, my community set my patriotic vision, values and obligations. When I sang or pledged the words that defined America’s noblest aspirations, even after I learned that the founders had not regarded my people as Americans, I focused on the words as if they were meant for me.
Although he experienced awful treatment as a Black American man, my father volunteered to fight for “World Democracy” in WWII and in the Korean War. He would regale us children with stories about the places he had visited and the people he had encountered overseas. Always, with some “preaching,” but mostly by example, he demanded that we children treat all people with dignity and respect. Even though people in our own country looked down on us, we had no right, he said, to mistreat people anywhere.
In addition to advice about patriotism and treatment of others, some other important “advice,” leveled to me was that I should take full advantage of educational opportunities, assume control of my own destiny, and that I not walk through life blaming all Americans for the crimes of some Americans. Eventually, at not yet 18 years of age, miraculously, I realized that my blaming the real criminals — White Supremacists, most of whom were dead — for oppressive conditions would not undo their crimes, but would waste my time and retard my acquisition of the wherewithal I would need to succeed. In a flash, in mid-June of 1958, when I stepped foot on Lackland Air Force Base for basic training, I understood that I should commit myself to my sworn oaths and pledges, and the things I had been taught — especially, personal superiority — all reflections of an amalgamation of America’s professed aspirations, my upbringing and the six Black Cultural Tenets.
I was in Franco’s Hitler inspired, Fascist-like Spain, my first overseas assignment, soon after the book, The Ugly American, was published. I was cognizant of what the book conveyed because I had witnessed some of my military colleagues treating people in their own countries the way they treated “inferior” people in America. So, despite policies against it, early in that assignment I began traveling alone around the country, into big cities, little villages, churches, farms, and the homes of my Spanish friends. At the time, America was in a frenzy of anti-Black racism as desegregation was beginning in earnest. But I was treated with dignity and respect by people in other countries.
The philosophy I had inculcated from my upbringing in Black Roanoke, VA; America’s Ideal Creed; and Secular Humanism correspond with the Charter of the United Nations: We should affirm an abiding faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of men and women; we should foster conditions under which justice and respect for law can be maintained; and we should promote freedom through social progress and better standards in health, education, and the basic means to pursue happiness.
In addition, I add, we should openly rebuke anyone who violates this philosophy. Some abuses are so destructive to humanity that we define ourselves as less than human when we refuse to eliminate them wherever and however they exist. Moreover, America should earn the moral right to assist the world by demonstrating in fact that Americans have been lifted from any condition that impedes their chances to pursue happiness. Great harm has befallen our lowliest of all races because we made oaths, promises and commitments in consonance with the philosophy, but we have failed to fulfill them.
National Character that encapsulates Democracy’s most noble objectives for humanity — the Preamble to the Constitution and the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence — is what America should demonstrate to the world. Although neo-Fascist panderers and liars have violated and smutted it, this is what defines National Character for this citizen of my Home and the World Community!
