A
Legacy of duplicity that affects the Collective Psychology of America
by
Frank A. Jones
______________
The Fourth of
July is a day many Americans fly their flags and talk patriotism to all
comers. Some even wrap their houses all around with flags. It is their day
to "show" that they love their country. It is that one-day that
is set aside for touting the greatness of this nation and the people's
love for their form of democracy.
I live in a
community in Oakland, California that is a black middle to upper-middle
class community; there are many property-millionaires--they bought their
houses twenty years ago when property was affordable and now has
appreciated to the tune of millions. Were I, or many of those living in
this community, attempting to purchase the houses I live in today, I could
not afford it. This is shape of things in California's red-hot realty
market.
So when the
Fourth of July comes each year, we invite friends, talk old times, enjoy
the holiday, etc. Do we love the country? Of course, but our love is not
the type that goes with much flag waving and demonstration. But our lone
white neighbor, however, demonstrates his patriotism year-round, and
perennially hangs his flag alongside a display of his Republican
credentials, as if they were threats to the community to behave
itself and be patriots too.
And as I go in
and out of my community, I often reflect on the comments of our newest
neighbor* about why he was willing to pay so much to live in the Oakland
Hills:
I
wanted to live here; to feel the comfort of living among black people. I
had a nice home in the Hayward Hills, but I was one of a few blacks, and I
wanted to feel comfortable. My neighbors seemed okay, but every now and
then, they would let something slip that would make me a bit
uncomfortable; you know!
Yes,
I do know. I know that after all these years of living together in
America, after being the first American to
die for this country, after a Civil War that threatened to divide the
country into two nations, after World War 2 and the Vietnam War where
Black Americans died in disproportional numbers for this country,
after the Civil Rights Movement where Black Americans were killed and
dismembered immorally and brutally by those having warped notions and
definitions of racial superiority, after this nation's invasion of other
small countries that were safe to invade in the name of freedom and having
killed many in foreign lands, we are still possessed of a notion in our
constitution that fails to make itself known to all Americans. And
because of that failure of democracy to manifest itself to all
Americans, this nation duplicitously pretends that it is a true
democracy--telling the world that democracy is the way of the world, but
it is not real at home for large segments of its citizenry, and it is
being imposed on others by force.
On
this Fourth of July, 2005, this black American realizes that duplicity is
almost built within America's system of democracy. It was Thomas
Jefferson, who died on July 4, 1826, who wrote the wonderful words of the
Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, but he
did not mean women, he did not mean blacks and other ethnically minority
in American numbered people. This same Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and
begot children by those slave women. Is that not duplicity?
Jefferson's
last written letter was composed as he was dying at the 50th
anniversary of this country's independence--July 4. In that letter he
reflected on the probable future of self-governance of all people and
democracy in the world. He suggested that democracy would spread
throughout the world sooner or later.
In
seeing the world and plotting a democratic configuration of that world in
his mind, it was beyond his ability to see himself as self-deceived
or a man with a blind spot. Surely, a man owning slaves and sleeping with
them--one of the most intimate acts one human being can engage in with
another--could not factor into his equation of the world that the very
human beings he pleasured himself with would also want the same things he
wanted. Is that some form of pathology peculiar to Jefferson? It seems,
indeed, to be a legacy that has passed down to the collective
consciousness of America?
This psychological legacy
has allowed Americans to talk democracy to themselves and the world while
not practicing it at home in large measure, among large segments of their
own citizenry.** This may be one of the greatest gifts of Jefferson to
this nation.
Yes, there was some agony
of conscience, indicated in his writings, that Jefferson experienced with
this duplicity, but that agony was placed in abeyance as he prosecuted
that duplicity. He spoke grand words of light, but lived and operated in
vast racial darkness that is still America's default drive.
But can a nation with this
problem of significant duplicity*** in its practice of democracy, which
poses a problem in the actual definition of democracy, honestly extol and
tout democracy aboard when it has not completed its establishment at home?
Jefferson's idea that democracy will probably spread from America to the
world requires that it first be correctly established in America. That has
not happened, but we go blithely along anyway encouraging others to
install the American brand of democracy. That is a mistake.
There is a problem when the majority of a nation's citizens deprive the minority of equal protection and equal privileges and that majority only wrestles with their consciences, but do little more. Yet this is America's method, even after years of pain and upheaval--a pretense that all is well and democracy reigns as the catholic rule of the day.
So, on this July 4th, 2005,
as I remember what my new really rich neighbor said, "You
know," yes, I do know America!
[Originally published 7/4/05]
_________________
*Now he is a real millionaire, as
opposed to us paper tigers.
**There is constancy in
America that is ignored by the majority of Americans as if it does not
exist; but it does. Discrimination against non-whites, preference to
whites, systems of injustice throughout our society, which Martin Luther
King, Jr., rightly called "Systems of Aggression" against
blacks, are not democracy in its crudest forms. Yet it is this constancy
that is everyday America. And to operate as if these things do not exist
is deceptive. It may even be pathological.
** *This problem is significant when approximately 75 million of its citizens (the US has a population of some 290 million) are systematically excluded from the full range of benefits and privileges of that "democracy." This defies the definition of a democracy!
