Post by Rabbi Neil on Jul 1, 2022 21:43:05 GMT
Celebrating America’s independence from Britain has always been a little awkward for me as a Brit. Whenever possible, our family would go to the plaza to eat pancakes and I would ironically wear my T-shirt that says “It’s a British thing – you wouldn’t understand.” This year, I don’t want to celebrate the same way, and not just because there’s still a pandemic and I don’t want to be around hundreds of unmasked people. I’ve seen a lot of people online share that this year they don’t want to celebrate the independence of a country which recently determined that they no longer have independence to make decisions about their own body.
The idea of America and the reality of America have never fully co-existed. The American dream is currently a fantastical ideal of equal opportunity that leads to prosperity and success for all given sufficient hard work and determination. That American dream is a lie created by those in power to blame those who are powerless for their current predicament – “It’s not our fault you’re poor, you just haven’t tried hard enough to not be poor!” But when the rich tell the poor that they got rich through their own grit and determination, and conveniently forget how they almost always inherited wealth and simultaneously inherited access to systems of education, to employment opportunities and to financial loopholes that overwhelmingly increase their chances of success, and also when the poor are denied free healthcare and have to bankrupt themselves merely to stay alive, then the American dream is exposed as propaganda of class warfare.
When the Supreme Court of the United States forces women – especially women of color who live below the poverty line – to give birth against their will and thereby force them into the unpaid labor of parenthood, and also when Native Americans are forced from their ancestral land and put into reservations where they are locked into poverty or have nuclear waste polluting their land causing disproportionate rates of cancer in their community, and also when the CIA deliberately floods black neighborhoods of Los Angeles with crack cocaine in order to get African-Americans addicted and arrested, and also when dirty fossil fuel plants are placed in predominantly non-white areas so that pollution ruins the health of communities of color, and also when clean water is denied for years to predominantly black cities, and also when police arrest and kill people of color at a far higher rate than white Americans stopping them from ever being able to even apply for jobs, and also even when people do apply for jobs and American employers have been demonstrably shown to have rejected interviews for candidates with ethnic-sounding names over those who have white-sounding names, then over and over again, the American dream is further exposed as the propaganda not just of class warfare but also of racial class warfare. America the Beautiful, indeed.
The cognitive dissonance necessary for believing in the American dream, in an America the Beautiful, is staggering. It can only be achieved by a repeated act of erasure, by incarcerating black Americans at five times the rate of white Americans, American Indians or Alaskan Natives at three times the rate of white Americans and Latinx at twice the rate of white Americans. The American dream is a white fantasy that erases from participation in society those who know it is a lie, and erases from debate any contradictory viewpoint by labelling it as “unpatriotic.” There’s nothing Beautiful about erasing the existence of others. And now, only this week, another act of erasure by the Supreme Court, allowing teachers and coaches to lead the children under their care in public Christian prayer. That is a deliberate act of erasure because you can be sure that those who choose not to participate in public Christian worship will be branded as not being “team-players,” and will be excluded from opportunities that are given to those who pray with the group. And if a Muslim or Sikh or Hindu or Jew chose to engage in similarly public evangelical prayer, do any of us really think that social exclusion or even physical violence against that person would not follow? That is an act of erasure. And that tendency to erase those who don’t buy into America the Beautiful narrative is not going away any time soon, for we know that next the experiences and rights of LGBTQ+ Americans will be taken away. Violence against them will increase and their opportunities for employment, for healthcare and much more will be removed. The American dream is a dangerous fantasy that deliberately erases the experiences of those who are not affluent, white, Christian or straight.
One could, of course, say that America the Beautiful, the Christian hymn that reinforces the American dream, also celebrates the natural beauty of America – its spacious skies, its amber waves of grain, its purple mountain majesties among the fruited plain. That’s fair, although the Supreme Court this week ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency is no longer able to do what is necessary to protect the environment. It has therefore this week now become a mathematical impossibility for America to achieve its greenhouse gas emissions targets, meaning that climate change will continue to wreak havoc across the world and even here in this country. When the amber waves of grain can’t grow because of profound water shortages which are already affecting this country and particularly where we live, and as a result its people starve unless it imports even more food from other countries that desperately need it, will America be Beautiful then?
And yes, I do believe that America the Beautiful is a specifically Christian hymn. The lyrics, written by Katherine Lee Bates, first appeared in a church publication called The Congregationalist in 1895. In those lyrics, Bates specifically connects America’s glory and America’s success to a very Christian view of God whom she hopes will help run the country so that our human frailty is overcome. “God mend thine ever flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control,” she writes. “God shed His grace on thee till souls wax fair as earth and air.” That’s not a Beautiful America, that’s a dangerous theocracy, and that’s exactly what millions of Americans are trying to turn this country into. To do it, they will erase the voices and the opportunities for millions of people.
This week, I remember Student Rabbi Andreas Hinz, whose being gay was publicly erased in order that he could work in European Jewry. In fact, his being gay was used to specifically threaten him, to try to literally blackmail him, in the same way that countless members of the LGBTQ+ community around the world have experienced, and will certainly experience more in this country in years to come. When Andy was murdered, one of the questions the police needed to answer was whether he was killed because he was a Jew or because he was gay. That question should never, ever exist. But that question is the kind of question that is going to appear more and more in this country in the coming years. Knowing that, I think we have to be honest with America The Not So Beautiful Right Now and ask ourselves what an America the Beautiful would actually look like. An America the Beautiful would be a country where no-one felt pressured to participate in the religious rituals of others, a country in which oil and coal lobbies were not able to deliberately despoil the earth for their own profit, a country in which racial and class inequality would be a thing of the past. Maybe the real vision of America to hold onto is the one in Woodie Guthrie’s song This Land is My Land. For one thing, that song celebrates America without invoking God needing to fix it for us or to fix us for it. More than that, though, it doesn’t erase the existence of the marginalized. For example, it says, "In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple, / By the relief office I seen my people; / As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking / Is this land made for you and me?” A vision of a Beautiful America means realistically facing the systemic issues that lock people into poverty. It means asking the profoundly uncomfortable questions and working out answers, however painful they may be. This land is made for you and me is an egalitarian statement of such profundity because it’s not just blindly pretending that we’re all equal, but it’s acknowledging that we should all be equal but the way American society is currently structured deliberately reinforces inequality.
So, maybe I have no right as an Englishman to say what it means to be patriotically American. Patriotism isn’t really my thing, after all, because it’s so often tied to nationalism which is so often tied to violence and especially to colonialism (I know that many Americans pretend that their patriotism stems from independence from colonialism, but the global economic and social colonialism that has come from this country in the last hundred years or so clearly disproves that in my mind). But for those who are struggling to be patriotic this coming July 4th, I would humbly suggest that patriotism could perhaps be found in setting the vision for an America the Beautiful, and by not pretending that it is already perfect. Maybe patriotism could be expressed by recognizing how we have benefited from the oppression of others and continue to benefit from such oppression. As Jews, we look forward to a Messianic Age by confronting the darkness of today’s society and then working towards a better, more equal, one. We don’t pretend that the Messianic Age is here and now. So, perhaps similarly on this July 4th weekend, we can celebrate our independence from so many of the current forms of erasure and cultural and physical violence that some members of our community, and millions of Americans, are subjected to in this country today. Perhaps we can celebrate our liberty, our privilege, to reshape American society into something more just. Perhaps we can celebrate freedom by pre-emptively protecting the freedoms of those who are likely to soon lose theirs. Perhaps we can transform the American dream from a violent act of erasure into something honest and realistic, from an ideal of success for everyone if only they tried hard enough to success for everyone because we removed all the obstacles that were holding them back. Maybe that’s something patriotic we can all work towards. It won’t be easy for sure, especially with the vested forces of oppression heavily entrenched in the highest judiciary in the land, but with hope – with our action – maybe that is how we can celebrate independence. Maybe patriotism this July 4th is in recognizing that “it is not our duty to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it” (Avot 2:21). And let us say, Amen.