What is the True America?

If not for the events of the past week, you might be surprised to hear that my 11-year-old daughter turned to me with confusion and concern and asked, “Dada, what is the true America?”

Over the past few weeks, my 11-yr-old daughter and I have been reading, chapter by chapter, “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.” The story of Vladek Spiegelman, a holocaust survivor, told through the narratives and drawings of his son, Art, documents the otherwise unimaginable trauma Vladek witnessed, experienced, and passed on to subsequent generations.

I first read Maus, at about my daughter’s age, and now I am sharing and processing the intense emotions again with her. One of the things I found most upsetting is the speed with which the “normal life” of a young budding entrepreneur in 1930s Poland was rapidly transformed into cataclysmic chaos and carnage. In reading together, my daughter has learned just how prone to change fragile lives can be, and that rapid catastrophic changes can transform an otherwise seemingly stable government into the despotic regime of a tyrant.

Part of the reason my daughter and I read books chapter by chapter is to have an opportunity to discuss how they relate to our lives and experiences and other stories. After Maus, we then read, compared, and contrasted narratives written by our own relatives’ experiences during WWII. I do not know, and no one knows the stories of the countless people on my fathers’ side of the family who died in concentration camps. But we have cousins from my mother’s side, Henry Koperweiss and Zvi Solow who survived Auschwitz and other camps. Zvi is still alive today, a professor emeritus of History and Philosophy at Ben Gurion University in Israel and I vividly remember the mixture of fascination, revulsion, and fear the first time that I saw the tattooed ink numbers drawn on his forearm.

One uplifting truth of Maus is that, Vladek Spiegelman’s time in concentration camps concluded when he and thousands of other prisoners were liberated by American Soldiers. While it’s certainly not a fairy-tale “everyone lived happily ever after” ending, the feeling of miraculous joy at the arrival of the “good guy” American GIs is intense and memorable. Shortly thereafter, in a process similar to so many of our relatives, was emigration out of a war-ravaged home country, and immigration to the United States of America which delivered the relief of making it to a promised land.

But this is not the only true America.

The next story that my daughter and I just finished reading is, “They Called Us Enemy” which tells the story of George Takei and his family’s experiences in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. My daughter’s brow furrowed in sadness and anger as she learned how people of Japanese descent, many US citizens, were rounded up based on their race and imprisoned for little more than suspicion. Her jaw dropped in shock when she learned that they were unlawfully imprisoned and guarded by American Soldiers.

My son read the title of the book and wasn’t sure whether it was “They Called Us Enemy” or “They called US Enemy.”

There is no one true America.

My daughter and I discussed how a family member fled the antisemitism of Poland in 1910s and arrived in New York City. While his parents worked low-wage jobs, this family member benefited from the public school system, had the opportunity to attend college, and went on to begin a PhD in chemistry. Shortly after the outset of WWII he was recruited and eagerly volunteered for a special project he thought could help bring a faster end to the war. He was motivated to help defeat the Nazis because he heard rumors of how they were slaughtering his relatives still trapped back in Europe. The US government relocated him and his wife and their first born son to a secret laboratory in Oakridge, Tennessee to improve processes purifying Uranium for the Manhattan project.

George Takei’s aunt and cousin, living in Hiroshima, died in the atomic blast that killed countless civilians, dropped by American Airforce bombers.

In order for my daughter to understand that there is no one true America, she needs to know these stories, and many more.

The Uranium purified for the bomb was forcibly extracted from tribal lands, and the earth on which the Oakridge laboratory was built is Cherokee Land. After decades of intensifying resistance and conflict, its first peoples were forcibly removed in the first half of the 1800s by United States soldiers.

The American war machine including the bombers that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were literally riveted together by women who, after WWII, lost jobs in the manufacturing sector and were systemically denied employment and opportunities for career advancement.

Many Black GIs who had fought in WWII and liberated people around the world from fascism, returned to a still-segregated caste system in the United States. Some were killed, all were prejudicially discriminated against. Through structurally racist policies such as redlining, Black GIs and subsequent generations were denied wealth and prosperity through home equity.

Our children need to know that there is no one true America. The reality is that there has never been one true America. As the United States of America is grappling with the unsettling events of this past week, many are pointing to earning indicators over the past 4 years. However, we would be better to help our children learn about recurrent patterns over the past 400 years that expose the many myths that have deluded far too many of us.

The United States Capitol building in Washington DC is internationally recognized as a leading symbol of democracy and freedom. While it certainly is true that many around the world see the United States as a beacon of hope and aspiration, many also see it as a source of injustice, ongoing imperial military domination, and economic oppression.

In the midst of an insurrectionist mob breaching the walls of this august edifice on Wednesday January 6, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden (and countless others) asserted that the scenes of chaos did not reflect “a true America, do not reflect who we are.”

But this begs the questions Who are we? How do we decide what is a true America?

The only “truth” of America is many truths. Who we are as America is the tangled weaving together of Americans, where we come from, where our families’ and ancestors’ come from, what they/we have experienced and continue to experience. It is through the intertwining of these lived stories that we can seek to better understand where our culture, interests, aspirations derive from, and hopefully come together to shape a better new way forward.

As I read stories with my daughter, and my son, and as we all share stories with our children, we should focus on developing the next generations of Americans to know themselves, which is to know ourselves. We should help children develop understanding of where they come from, which is where we come from. We should ask children where they hope to go, what interests them, what matters in their community. We need to focus on creating conditions to help young people develop deep understanding of complex interwoven narratives. We need to help children develop rich relationships and engage in the hands-on practice of good work. In this way our schools can become the healing nurseries for the future generations that can stabilize, fix and improve our limping democracy.

We will never create one true America, and we should not delude ourselves that there is one true America to aspire to. But we can, and should, create the learning experiences and education systems that develop the next generations of adults, voters, leaders, activists who will be prepared to hold the full complexity of America’s truths. and can collaborate effectively in the ongoing improvement of the United States of America.