“Patriotic” Education: UNpatriotic and UNeducational, 4/25/2015

Ask yourself a question:  do you love your country, or do you just love the makeup your country wears?  Do you love “Good Morning, America”--- with all of her bad breath and plaque and body odor and bed hair--- or do you just love “America, the Beautiful” after she’s been sanitized and dressed in designer fabric?

In light of all this Valdosta flag-stomping controversy, I thought this would be a good time to address false patriotism--- in education.
  It’s the kind of patriotism that causes people to flip out over a disrespected piece of fabric… but care nothing about the loss of American lives at home to police brutality.  Even when the victims are veterans... who once put their lives on the line for the fabric. 

(HA!  You thought I was gonna Mike Brown ya, right!  Nah, that’s too easy…)

As history teachers, part of our job is to instill patriotism in our students …which is a pretty dumb request when you really think about it.  It’s dumb like… when murderers hire defense attorneys to help them beat their charges.  History teachers are, for all intents and purposes, America’s defense attorneys.  Here to convince America’s youth of one or more of the following:  1) the bad stuff didn’t happen; 2) the bad stuff wasn’t really that bad; 3) the people affected either deserved it or aren’t really ‘people worth commemorating’.

…Well, maybe some of us might not have a problem with this task except for one thing--- we’re history teachers, not defense attorneys.  Our job is to teach history, not to put a spin on it so that everybody can feel good about it; that’s what Hollywood is for.  Just think:  we went to universities and studied history only to get jobs where we’re forbidden from delving into what we were taught. 

Hell, can we at least get a tuition refund? 

Like defense attorneys only disclosing the parts of their client’s testimony that will help them beat the charges, history teachers in America are requested to teach a filtered history that absolves America of as much responsibility and incrimination as possible.  But it gets worse.  Think about what America is most notorious for--- its treatment of Africans, African-Americans, and Indigenous Peoples.  So, unlike leaving out mere events in a defense case, teaching American History leaves out not just events… but actual people.  The legacies of a significant portion of the populace are all but missing from history curriculums across the board.  All to keep Amer

ica in good standing and promote that thing we think is “patriotism”.

But let’s talk about that word. “Patriotism” --- love for one’s homeland, the country of one’s fathers (hence the Latin word root “pater-, patri-”).  Tell me:  what kind of patriotism devalues and minimizes members of its own population?  How can we say we’re teaching American patriotism while insinuating that America’s citizens of color are insignificant?  Citizens whose ancestors have done everything from stack the bricks of America’s first buildings, to raise and nurse the c

hildren of America’s plantation owners, to take up arms and die in America’s first wars--- fighting before they had even attained full legal human status, let alone
citizenship.  How is referring to this ignorance as “patriotism” not outright contradiction and hypocrisy?

…But God forbid someone tampers with an American flag.  Because, somehow, the SYMBOLS of America mean more than the actual FLESH AND BLOOD of America.  *shrugs*

 I’m not the type who would burn the American flag; I’m from a military family myself, even have a cousin in law enforcement who was killed in the line of duty.  I love my country--- more than you, very possibly.  Know why I think so?  Because I know the truth about America, and still think it’s an amazing and daring and worthwhile human experiment unlike any other ever before it.  I don’t have to sugar coat America’s horrors or the atrocities we’ve been host to and a part of; in fact, it’s those shortcomings that, for many of us, won’t let us take our eyes off America.  “How will she grow from this?  How will she recover from this?  How will she become better than this?”  I mean, just think of how many countries around the world have been affected by the LIE that America has portrayed itself to be; how much more powerful an influence if we could make TRUTH of it!  How could you NOT love being part of a potential like that, of a story like this!  The Land of the Frederick Douglasses and Dr. Kings and JFKs; the Land of the Grimke Sisters, Sitting Bulls and the Malcolm X’es; the Land of the Tupac Shakurs and Booker T. Washingtons and Ava DuVernays.  …Who RUNS, who HIDES from a beautiful legacy like that?

You see, many of us who complain about this country… we complain because we love it.  You don’t complain about things you don’t care about; things you don’t care about, you up and leave behind.  When you love a person, and that person has self-destructive habits, you confront that person.  “Hey… you need to change.  Put that alcohol away; it’s gonna destroy you.  Put that temper away; it’s gonna destroy you.  Put that insecurity away; it’s gonna destroy you.”  It’s only when you DON’T care that you can sit back and watch--- and exploit--- a person at their worst.  Of all these so-called “patriots”, how many of them live their lives in denial of their own country’s history?  Live in denial of their own country’s problems? Reap the BENEFITS and PRIVILEGES of the ungodly cancers that tear this country apart?

If you claim you love America, but don’t have the guts to face America’s past head on… you’re a liar.  You only love the false image of America; you only love the self-gratifying portions of America.  You LUST over America, and you’re fine with her brokenness as long as you’re on the winning side of it.

Where are the REAL patriots?  Not the ones who will fight to protect supremacist ideologies and half-baked histories, but the ones who want to write The Unaltered History of America?  To put that book in history classrooms to be taught? To ensure that she never repeats her former mistakes?

…I’m sorry.  Soapbox moment.

It’s funny to me:  so many minority students are turned off to history, and the question frequently pops up of how to make them take interest.  Uh…  ever thought about including their history??  Not speaking of their history as some sort of tangent to American History??  Or as some mythical American legend that maybe didn’t happen??  You wonder how a brotha can step on a flag, or speak “un-American rhetoric”?  …Because he doesn’t feel included here.  He doesn’t feel wanted here.  And if you were a real patriot, you would see this as a problem--- not his demonstration, but the alienation that motivates --- and say, “For the love of this country, for the betterment of this country, what can we do to fix this?”

…Ya know, if a man married a woman because of what she looked like in full cosmetic armor, then divorced her because of what she looked like when all that came off, you would say his love was false.  Superficial.  How is it any less superficial to say, “I love America”, but then refuse to acknowledge African Slavery, Native American Extermination, Vietnam, the Prison Industrial Complex, and all the other not-so-glorious unfortunate truths of America’s history?  In fact, if we refuse to teach these things to our citizens--- to our kids--- how much is our “Pledge of Allegiance” really worth?  How many more youths will grow up singing “The Star Spangled Banner” only to have an ‘a-ha’ moment later in life and wonder if it was written by the Devil himself?

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