Being American and Fighting For What We Believe In
I am a proud Black man and a proud Army Veteran. Believe it or not, some people I come across separate those two facts as different personas. “You’re a veteran, can you believe what they’re doing?” “Let me guess, you’re voting for them because you’re black?” As people often struggle to fit me into a narrative, I have become very used to living accused of ambiguity for the cause by which I stand for the most.
I believe that standing and fighting for what’s right is both necessary and essential to what it means to be American.
A couple of years after being on active duty in the military, I remember I was sitting in a university classroom feeling very out of place. I was years older than everyone else and had a very different lived experience as an adult than a large majority of the student body.
The teacher asked the class about the growing movement at the time to remove the Pledge of Allegiance from schools. A young Black woman raised her hand and said, “The Pledge is hollow and meaningless and is spoken with gritted teeth by the oppressed and a loud lack of understanding by the ignorant.” I found myself caught off guard by the vitriol by which she spoke but continued to sit and listen. Then student after student spoke up, feeling the same way.
Finally, another young Black woman raised her hand and said, “I feel like we should not only remove the Pledge but we should also change our country’s flag. They are not mine, this country isn’t mine, and I don’t believe in what America stands for anymore.”
These words were chilling, thought-provoking, and shared by so many. Here I am, having worn the flag with pride for years, believing in every ideal that is America, and at 18 years old, she had already given up in her beliefs of what this country and it’s symbols mean. While this was years ago, today we find ourselves with similar sentiments on a much grander scale.
I swore an oath to fight for freedom and protect Americans and the ideals that make our country the greatest in the world. That said, I have since seen horrific human trafficking, modern-day slavery, and the realizations, and impacts, of racial inequity in our cities. People of color in this country have been historically, systematically, and continuously disenfranchised and oppressed.
With every last breath stolen from the lungs of Black men as a knee presses on their neck or bullets enter their back, it is evidence of how far we are from achieving the ideals of freedom and justice for all that this country stands for.
One might wonder why someone would want to fight for our country understanding these realities. What we stand for and what is reality, however, are two different things. When we stand together as anti-racist, it is because in reality there is still a population of people who do not believe in equality. When we stand for freedom and against all forms of oppression, it is because of the reality of human trafficking, systemic racism, mass incarceration, institutional sexism, and all other injustices.
The word allegiance means loyalty or commitment of an individual to a group or cause. That said, the Pledge of Allegiance is not a declaration of the reality by which we live but a commitment to stand for the cause of equality of freedom and justice for which we believe in.
I didn’t wear the flag with pride because our country is perfect. I wore it because I believed that the ideals that we have not yet achieved are worth fighting for so that we can turn our dreams into reality. Those who are in the streets and calling for change are doing so because they know the cause, making America reflect its ideals, is worth fighting for.
If we want the reality of America to reflect the same ideals by which we as its people stand for, we must take action to achieve it. “… with liberty and justice for all.” These words cannot be just good ideas we say aloud with our hands over our hearts.
America and its ideals are a cause like no other in that we must build a foundation of freedom and justice for every one of its citizens. We cannot do that without commitment to that cause and the equality we have been promised. We cannot do that by being content with the status quo.
Our country is not equal and there are still citizens denied access to the most basic principles by which this country is founded. That is a status by which we cannot and should not accept as Americans.
Some people are suggesting that those who are protesting are somehow not American or that they should even leave this country if they don’t like it. I’m curious what those same people would have said to the abolitionists opposing slavery or to those fighting for equality in the Civil Rights Movement. I, however, believe that the dream America was founded on was not built on contentment or falling in line with whatever is the current state of being.
Our country was founded on the hopes and dreams of what America can be thanks to the dedication of its citizens to oppose what is unjust and fight for what is right.
I not only respect and stand with those fighting for the cause of freedom and justice who peacefully protest, I find it to be the most American thing we can do.
