Haditha: A Lesson In The American Character
-Some reflections on the American Character-
Frank A. Jones

Each day I meet people from other nations, and  many of them have bought into the American media's wicked portrayal of Black Americans as low-life, borderline negative persons. The acceptance of this stereotype is especially pronounced among uneducated Asians--a peculiarity I cannot really understand, but I often see it. The American image machine has harmed the reputation of Black Americans worldwide. We are stereotyped as criminals, thugs and thieves; whites, on the other hand, have crafted their image as heroic and kind, handsome and morally good people.

What is even more tragic to me is that too many inner city Black youths believe the media's miscasting of Black people; they actually think that the vast majority of Blacks exhibit the stereotyped imaginations that American media posits to Black America and the world. (Brent Staples also touches on this false socialization of Black inner city youths in some of his writings.) And because the simplistic comedy sitcoms are their TV reality shows, they have no idea that there is another, larger  world of Black Americans who have nothing to do with those stereotypes.

The mischaracterizing of Black Americans by the American media actually demonstrates part of the American character that should be looked at more closely. American psyche is an interesting one, known by many of us who are willing to see it for what it is and willing to cite it when and where it is visible. Even though it has been carefully hidden from view and a stereotype erected in its place, it is currently being displayed openly in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world regardless of attempts to hide it.

The White House actually hired a special image consultant to go to the Middle East and around the world to talk a new American image into being--a spin doctor to erase the real America character from the minds of Middle Easterners and create a new one based on words. This consultant is tasked with doing what lawyers did with the Rodney King videotapes, making unwitting and gullible people think that what their eyes saw was a lie.  "Why believe your lying eyes?"

Since war imagery has worked so well in crafting negative Black images, why not put that spin-doctor to work on the American image, since the realities on the ground have eroded the Hollywood superhero image given to white America?  And why not measure the Middle Easterners by our own limitations: If we buy a lie, they will too. The problem with that tactic is this: movies, media, and government pronouncements are the food of most Americans, and they help fashion our reality of and about ourselves and others. Americans want to believe our self-imaging and are willing to accept without question what we say about ourselves. Of course, it is all good about us and often bad or strange about others.

That has become the American norm, but during times of stress, the true nature and character are exhibited; who and what the character of a nation is also exhibited. Tragedy, on the other hand, brings unity and reliance on others--a coming together--as in the case of  9-11.  But war inescapably brings out the dark side of a nation; it does not create that dark side, it only illuminates it and makes it manifest to all willing to acknowledge it.

There are many Americans, however, who already know this dark side and have been living with it. For Americans to live with themselves many simply deny it in any number of ways--from not watching or reading the news,  accepting whatever the unbalanced, nonobjective media says, to accepting unquestionably the government's report of life and these times we live in, and thinking that we are no worst than others because they are doing the same horrible things that we are doing. These are ways a people cope and live with their horrible inner man.

Today in Iraq, the horrors of this nation are on display in grotesque form, a horror that most African and Hispanic Americans know and have always known were a part of this nation's character. Many of the things happening in Iraq have already happened here on many people of color: prisoner abuse is not new; it is widespread in American prisons--crowded and over populated with Black and Brown Americans matriculating through our justice system, which system is the fairest in the world, we tout.  Yet most of America is asleep in the delusion that all is well and the fine guards at our nation's prisons are doing a good job. It's just a few bad apples that do bad things, and our just American justice system will catch the problems and discipline and correct them. Bad apples or core behavior? The problem continues almost unabated.

The American character is viewed through a Hollywood prism. We are as the movies depict us (unless it is a Spike Lee or Michael Moore movie) and as our lofty leaders say we are. That is the image we give to the world and to ourselves, but that character flies in the face of what is transpiring on the ground in Iraq as done by American troops. They actually project the American character that many minority Americans are familiar with. To many, the American character is not hidden and it is not what America says to itself and the world that  it is. The American character has solidified over many years and revealed itself so any objective or fair minded person can see what it really is. But first, the movie stereotypes must be set aside.

As a way of cleansing its image and taking no responsibility for its past misdeeds and injustices, America often abandons or re-characterizes its dark past, becoming a parentless child of history. The American past, however, cannot be overlooked as a factor in the investigation of its character today. After all, America is a relatively young nation, there is no need to unearth an ancient history to understand it.

Historian Elliot J. Gorn argues that Americans like a history not of fact but of memory--their contorted memory that paints them as the good guys who do no wrong. So the history that Americans will call to bear is always a glorious history that shows them as heroes who freed themselves from England's tyranny and freed other peoples from despotism. Indeed, that is glorious were it all of this nation's history. But it is not all of its history. And the other part of that history is being repeated and played out daily in Iraq and here at home in the USA too. It is that part that must be looked at along with the glorious part already given as a daily diet to determine who or what a nation is--its character.

The almost prophetic words of the late Black writer and child prodigy James Baldwin blare in my ear as he stated, "History [real] is not about the past, but the present. It is something we carry with us daily. We make assumptions based upon our history."   Therefore, regardless of how America tries to bury alive a horrid past, it cannot be buried when it has not been addressed. And America has never really dealt with its bloody, horrid history; it has always attempted to dismiss it or re-characterize it. But it must be dealt with and properly laid to rest before we can get pass it, or it will raise its ugly head whenever we are in a time of stress--as war is. South Africa and other nations have attempted to see themselves, warts and all, through Truth/Justice and Reconciliation Commissions; America, on the other hand, has had none of that; instead, it has lied to itself and the world about itself, its history, and it continues to lie until stress brings that  history face to face with itself and its true character is on display, ala Haditha.

Stress is often a truth serum that reveals what a nation is made of and the nature of its real character.  Americans are accustomed to lies from their governmental officials, their "holy" officials, their movies, and even from themselves. But the slave must know the master, Baldwin said, whether in those past roles or in the new form of current servitude, he must know the master (those on top and making crucial decisions) better than the master knows himself, for, Baldwin again, His life  depends upon it. When one's life is dependant on a thing, that thing is done well, known well--even perfectly.

Astute Black America that is not trying to make its fortune or shape its future in the Rap music business knows the way of the wind and can read the crude and refined character traits of this nation. The Abu Guaith and Guantánamo prison abuses of American soldiers were not new or surprises, other than to those who are willingly ignorant about the nature and character of America's system of justice and massive prison system at home. Abu Guaith has its counterparts in California, Georgia and every state in the union.

The Hadiatha killing incident, the shooting and killings of pregnant Iraqi women, and the many more killings of innocent Iraqi civilians were not new; nor were they a few amuck marines or soldiers--the few bad apples notion--they are a part of the American character that can be identified in America everyday among police in inner cities and prison guards. The torture of captured persons through renditions and other unlawful means are not new; the worldwide flaunting of the laws of other nations and our own laws are not new. All these acts fit well within the American character and behavior many have seen and experienced in this nation.

When there is a government official asked of the number of US killed in Iraq, and he answers  to a certainty, but when he cannot give a number of Iraqis killed, instead, he answers saying, "They don't count." that shows the American character as well. No one's life counts or is important but an  American life? This is who we are and where we; as a nation we have been here for hundreds of years! This is the character of this nation; a disregard for the dignity of others is seen in Iraq and also seen in this nation through its white privilege-- a special preference heaped upon whites that is real but almost invisible because of its ubiquity and  continuity.

The very presence of white privilege allows one to see himself in a very distorted and unreal way, and that is a dangerous paradigm for a nation to operate under--the Germans discovered this some years ago. The distortion is this: by consensus of a white majority, agreement is made about how things should be and that agreement becomes perceived as morally right.

In a democracy consensus may determine law, yet in a moral universe it does not determine morality of that law. Morality is a concept that must square with a higher law--that of God and the universal good of all mankind. To eliminate a higher law and deny any responsibility for averse and irresponsible conduct mischaracterized as right, good, or ethical, the "God is Dead" conceptual structures were instigated by Paul Tillich and other American religious officials. This type of morally wild west structure allows a people and nation to do whatever its wants and still call itself moral, ethical, or by any name of nobility it chooses; it has carte blanche to do what it will. It is god.

No American media depictions or spins doctors can, however, cleanse America's character--it is a malady of character gone untreated far too long, and that malady will not go away by ignoring or denying its existence. We will see sordid behavior daily in our own backyard and whenever stressful situations occasion themselves. This is the true character of America; consider life in America today and our short history. Dr. Gorn  suggests that Americans want a history of memory that somehow avoids what was done to Native Americans and their Long March; what was done to Africans during the Middle Passage and the period of slavery in Kenneth Stampp's Peculiar Institution; the Jim Crow laws that shamefully institutionalized  apartheid in this nation against all nonwhites; the white affirmative action inherently a part of white privilege. And this type of national history will not look at these truths about itself; hence, it will never see its own character.

But because I may be blind it does not follow that others are blind also. Throughout America today, the prison abuses at Abu Guaith and Guantánamo, the killings in Haditha and other civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan  are a part of the scene for many in this nation. And most of  these abuses are allowed and go uninvestigated. After all, they don't count--these are colored people, as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Allow me to end with another statement from James Baldwin, that he made on his last visit to America before returning to France where he died: When anyone attempts to dehumanize another, he does not know that it is himself whom he dehumanizes. Dehumanizing itself is what America has done to its character over the few hundred years of its existence and that it continues to do in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world.

The abusive behavior toward the weak in America and reflected in Haditha and Abu Guaith speaks adversely to the base character of this nation. And the rest of America cannot simply lay blame on a few bad apples and dismissed themselves as guiltless. It may be a cliché, but it still brings true that an apple does not fall far from the tree! Haditha and Abu Guaith are not behaviors removed from commonplace here in America.

Frank A. Jones
6/5/06

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