by Rev. Dr. Barb Doerrer-Peacock
The phrase…the song, “Proud to be an American” has always caused me to bristle. It was no different during this year’s Independence Day celebration. It has the strange, paradoxical effect of evoking both revulsion and tears of compassion. How is that possible? It pulls in me both the worst of American arrogance and exceptionalism, but also the swelling of gratitude for ultimate sacrifice and high values.
On July 4th, my husband Rich also was bristling at the song. He asked, “What’s the opposite of ‘proud’?” He was trying to figure out what exactly he felt about our nation these days. I had the same impulse. What do I feel, after 16 months of pandemic, after watching our country go through years of elected leadership that brought democracy to the brink of destruction, betrayed the trust of allies around the world, manifest the worst of the “ugly American” stereotype, and even now continues to threaten those lofty values by polarization of fears, distrust and demonizing others – both other Americans and non-Americans. We’ve experienced 16 months of ugly truths and hidden histories revealed, heard the cries of the oppressed, seen protests in the streets, and what feels like chaos reigning in our capitol, and people dying, dying, still dying – so many refusing the very serum that could save their lives, often because of the insidious erosion of trust.
I replied to him, “humble.” Humble is the opposite of proud. That caused us both to stop in our tracks and look at each other. Humble. I am humbled to be an American. That is indeed the right word.
I am a person of great privilege which I did nothing to deserve or earn. It was the system I was born into, and my skin is the right color. Yes, those who served in the United States military fought and sometimes died for our freedoms, our way of life, our privileges…and I am a grateful American. But I’m also keenly aware that so did many thousands, maybe millions of Indigenous people who died as a result of colonization from White Europeans. So did kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants who constructed much of the American economy and infrastructure yet reaped little benefit, or even fair share, and instead inherited an inequitable system within which they have always been kept at a disadvantage. So did Asian, Pacific Islander, Hispanic and Latino, Middle Eastern immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, indentured workers, all who found their way either by will or by force, either seeking a better life for their families, or to escape horrors in their homelands. I could go on reciting what now is a litany coming to light.
I am humbled to be an American. Some of my forbears were the White European colonizers, some of them escaping tyranny in their homeland…some of them – maybe all of them – bringing that unhealed trauma with them. I am growing in understanding of my own ancestral history that bore the ugly stains of flawed humanity. Yet, I am here and I’m humbled to be an American. For all its flaws…there are ideals that somehow, in some way survived the dysfunctions, the abuses, the greed, the lies told. It is those that make my heart swell with gratitude. Yes…freedom, justice for all, equality and equity, and the embracing of all who seek refuge and a better life. We may not yet have achieved those ideas, but many of us still hold them, live for them, die for them.
I am humbled to be an American because I share the paradoxical heritage of this country, the push and pull, the fears and joys, the confusion and clarity, the power and vulnerability, the flaws and the ideals, the One out of Many, the harmonies of culture woven from the many threads of tradition. I am humbled because I can be both privileged yet repentant. I am humbled because I am so deeply enriched by those whose ancestral journeys have been so impoverished yet also triumphant and heroic. I am humbled because I know myself and my country would be incomplete and so much poorer if it were not for the rainbow of earth’s human diversities that are represented here. I would not know God in the same way, I would not know our government in the same way, our natural environment, our sense of justice, the songs we sing and play, the art we make if it were not for each other, no matter if I call you friend or enemy.
I am humbled to be an American. My July 4th prayer is that God will keep my heart open, broken – yet healing, repentant and also repairing, humbled…yet also swelling with grateful joy.