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When I was a kid, the 4th of July meant cookouts, fireworks, and family. I never thought about why I was patriotic or why someone wouldn’t want to celebrate America’s birthday. At the age of 24, after living through some of the most racially tense moments in the new millennium,I feel that tension. “What tension?”, you might ask. The tension of realizing that the Declaration of Independence was not written with people of color in mind. The tension of looking at when slavery ended and when the Declaration of Independence was written, and noticing there is about 89 years in between. That goes without mentioning the Jim Crow, era and the civil rights movement. Was America really meant for people that look like me and my family? These are real questions swirling around my head amidst the haze of red, white, and blues and the ‘pop’ of firecrackers late into the night.
Want to know a secret? Sometimes I cringe when people praise the Founding Fathers. It confuses me. How could a group of people shown religious discrimination distribute it to others for years through slavery and other heinous laws? Yesterday while reflecting, it came to me: These men were human, broken, and frightened, just like you and me. Fear is the root of so many outward and more violent behaviors. Why do you think colonials came to America and drove out the Native Americans? Fear. Why do you think thousands of Africans were enslaved and systemically kept down? Fear. Fear makes you desperate and panicked. It causes you to dominate and fight wars because its you or them, its life or death. Fear makes anything different untrustworthy so you take with no questions asked and you become tyrant-like in an effort to survive. Its not right and I’m not making excuses, I’m just delving into the deep concerning this.
I love America, I do. I will honor America and the positions that the Founding Fathers held as pioneers of this country that I was born into. Without America I wouldn’t be here. My patriotism is rooted in God’s sovereignty. It’s not that I give credit to America or to the people who had a hand in founding it; I am finding my honor because I see God in this story. America is a story of all things working together for the good. Those Founding Fathers had no idea that they were writing prophetic words over their nation while they still had slaves serving in their homes:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
Those words took root and grew into an amazing strong tree of diversity (whether people like it or not) those written and spoken words breathed our melting pot of a nation into existence.
They had no idea that God was going to use twisted and fearful thinking for His ultimate good. I don’t know my ancestor’s specific story. But I do know that they survived the deadly Middle Passage journey. They didn’t jump overboard or die of disease. My bloodline survived slavery, they survived lynchings and beatings, and they survived Jim Crow laws. They survived the deadly fruit of fear. They survived and I was birthed from their strength. That is my patriotism. A table was set and there was no place for us, but God set a place at the table for us when there was none. People of color are the living legacy of: You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. (Ps. 23:5) and You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (Genesis 50: 20)
Even though I have seen the dark underbelly of America and the festering hurt and pain, I ask God to help me see America through His eyes so that I can indeed say ‘God bless America’. He used it to bring me to this point and time. He took something evil and made something beautiful. This is my patriotism. Thank you God for keeping us, and bestowing your freedom upon us forever more.