“How the Obama era gave us a dangerous patriotism”
“The definition of what it means to love America will expand. The browning of America won’t just change how the country looks in the future; it will change how Americans express patriotism, because racial minorities bring different histories to this notion of America as the “land of the free.”
I know I do. I’ve long felt ambivalent when people tell me I should love America. I wonder what America are they talking about. Should I just be happy, as one white man once told me, that my ancestors were rescued from the jungles of Africa and brought to the greatest country in the world?…
Many Freedom Riders actually signed last wills and testaments before the trips because they didn’t expect to return. Their fears were not unfounded. They were attacked by mobs wielding baseball bats and chains. Several were almost beaten to death. Many would carry physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives. All were unarmed. Their only weapon: faith that their country could be better.
This was a dangerous type of patriotism, not a polite demonstration or mild civil disobedience. It was the kind that could get you fired from your job, shunned by your community, beaten or killed.
Yet it was the kind of patriotism that made progress possible in America, said Ralph Young, author of “Dissent: The History of an American Idea.” He said people often forget the United States was founded by political and religious dissenters fleeing Europe. They put the right to dissent in the Constitution, he said.
“Dissent is the fuel for the engine of progress,” said Young, a history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. “Inertia is built into institutions. Things don’t change unless people push for change.”
