The Dark Side Of Memorial Day
Today is Memorial Day. I, like many people, have the day off. At 3:00 p.m. we will have a moment of silence in honor of those who have served, those who are serving and, most importantly, those who sacrificed their lives for America, a country they loved.
In former years the American story that we shared was that America was a place where truth, valor, democracy, and fairness reigned at home and abroad. We recognized our humanity, but believed these truths to be self-evident: Americans were and are good people. And this is basically true. Our history is certainly complicated, however.
BIG OLD LIE
Our remarkable Founding Fathers created documents that have stood up through centuries of change. But they were built on one lie - however much we may have been born as equals - an idea so odd as to up for only negligible debate at the Constitutional Convention - we were not deemed equal in America's guiding documents. The Three-Fifths Compromise is one such example. This compromise between Northern and Southern states was reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 as a way for slaves to be counted for tax purposes so that the states would have adequate representation in Congress. Slaves could not votes. Those opposed to slavery wanted to count only free blacks while those in favor of slavery would most benefit from an actual count of all slaves and blacks. This count afforded the Southern states a significant advantage in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Counting slaves as three-fifths of their actual numbers reduced the power of the slave states while increasing the northern position relative the original proposals of each group. So this is a long story that shows that America was founded on a lie, one that still infects us and from which we have not yet healed. The institutionalization of this system, however, has helped us, however, to maintain the view of ourselves as healthy and whole. America the beautiful. And we are. Like a body in which a scab has healed and no scar remains, we are beautiful. Sometimes something roils internally. Every once in a while it emerges as a boil and we are confused about it presence. We shouldn't be. We laid the paved road. And we have the healing balms.
BIG NEW LIES
No matter what your political party, the expectations for presidents is that they should tell the truth, uphold the Constitution, behave honorably, and, in the most powerful office in the land, represent the best interests on the country at all times. Because the world changes - its physical and political maps, its leaders, and the technologies that serve it, the American president must also be a person capable of continual flexibility and adaptability or, if these skills are not their forte, willing to surround themselves with those who are. They must have an intellectual curiosity about the world around them and a willingness to admit what they do not know. Without a long recitation of what I consider to be the horrors of the presidency of George W. Bush, he was none of these things. And in ways never before seen in American presidencies, he was not honest with the American people.
TRAUMATIC MEMORY
What, you might ask, does the line between the lies told by the Founding Fathers (good guys) in the Three-Fifths Compromise and the lies told by George W. Bush (not good guy) have to do with Veteran's Day?
Everything. It impacts how some Americans experience the American dream. Especially if their father is a social justice minister who preaches fairness. And who is also a historian who draws lines through history as a habit.
The line may not be the same for everyone. But this is my line. From slavery through a slew of wars in which people of African descent were 1) not considered worthy of fighting, then 2) once the services were integrated were sent to the front lines where they were the first to die. The way that my father teaches about slavery in the US, it starts in 1300. It is deep within us. Soup takes time to season. People don't just start believing that other human beings might help their market economies flourish.
The inheritance of my father's military trauma was, as are most traumas, a subconscious process. I just figured this out within the past three months. And as is the case when we face our internal emotional cockroaches, I am now freed. Before I tell you what getting here has won me, let me tell you why I was there.
Rev. Dr. Samuel Berry McKinney, my father, is a veteran of WWII. While he will occasionally mention military events, his veteran status is not part of his self-identity. His occasional stories are sad and anger-inducing. Part of the segregated Army - Air Corps (Off we go, into the wild blue yonder!), my father recounts being on blacks-only military sports teams. Eating sub-par food with wooden utensils on wooden tables in the black mess on the notice through an open door that white soldiers were eating better food at with silver cutlery at linen-covered tables; his stomach turned, however, to notice that they were being served by German POW's. An officer who called him Black Sambo. My father's response to which landed him in jail. He glories in saying that he barely got out of the service with an honorable discharge.
His brother, Wade Hampton McKinney III, whose grandfather was inexplicably named for a Confederate General with a reputation for keeping blacks in their place, was a Tuskegee Airman. He sat proudly in the place saved for the veterans at the Obama Inauguration. Different brothers, these two men.
My inherited trauma continued with the paternal instruction that I was to stand for the national anthem but not to sing the song. I stood to honor blacks who had given their lives for the country but was not to sing because of the original Founders sins. I stood for the Pledge of Allegiance and covered my heart but was silent. This was a lot for a little girl to understand or explain but I had learned my history well and my teachers, who then learned it from me, had to accept my polite revolutionary stance. And I was obeying my father. This revolution, which I came to believe in, I finally came to more clearly understand, after it made sense for a lifetime of wars and had continued to - not actively but subtlety traumatize me - had actually not been my personal choice.
I came to despise the military. We oppressed other countries, engaged in who knows what undercover CIA actions and undercut our democratic ideals. I made a policy not to date soldiers. Or to give them hell if I did.
LIGHTENING UP
My historian father taught me the doctrine of fairness. And the importance of asking the uncomfortable question. How, I asked myself, finally, could a country protect itself without a military? Shouldn't we have an extraordinary well-trained group of selfless people ready to protect us at all times but attempt to do most of our work with other countries through peaceful diplomatic means? What strategies did non-interventionist countries use to interact with other countries? Does size matter?
I also had to look at those who continued to enter the military. Mainly poor, often of color, they required my support. Even if I happened to disagree with the policies that sent them to battle, I could honor their service. Should not those selfless people who enter battle on our behalf represent all races and classes rather than be primarily from the lower and working classes as is now the case? So in the last year I have started singing the Star Spangled Banner and saying the Pledge of Allegiance and thanking every service person I see.
And three months ago, I figured out why that is so significant. I no longer need to share my father's trauma. He lived it for reasons that made good sense for him. I understand why he thought it important to share his experience with me as a way of protecting me from an enemy he thought was in the very fiber of the land. Its still here. But I have new strategies available to me. My father is, in fact, a Civil Rights hero, who worked and works mightily against oppression and bad policies. But he is also haunted. Men of his age tend not to be terribly introspective. Women of my age are annoyingly so.
I have new strategies. And no haints. I no longer need to live through his pain.
My father gave much of his spirit to WWII.
His father gave some of his in WWI.
My uncle managed to find some joy in service. We see the same things and respond differently.
This is my lesson.
We can bury our wounds.
I can now acknowledge that veterans have been giving their all to our flawed and wonderful country for years. They fight for those of us who have strung together big old and big new lies that outline our own personal as well as our shared American traumas. They do this because the American story of democracy holds. Democracy is a lovely, ugly, beautiful, imperfect thing. Its messy. Its hard. And that is why it is worth fighting for.
It is May 25, 2009. And I am very proud to say that this is my first Memorial Day.