And as a recap, we have the haiku of Dahlia Lithwick, a Supreme Court/jurisprudence expert and editor at Newsweek and Slate. The following haikus are from the Senate judiciary committee’s hearing on then SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Lithwick summarized of each of the Senators’ speeches in haiku. Here are a few of them:

Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Republicans call
Her failure to make new law
“Activism.” Bah!

Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
A wise Latina
Would set aside her bias
She just can’t do it

Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Law’s a quiet place
Where unpopular may hope
Young Latinas dream

Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
I cannot find fault
With empathy in judges
Courts are the last stand

Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
A prosecutor
Badass on white collar crime
Tough chick. Just like me.

The story of Professor Gates’s arrest is everywhere- I just saw Meet the Press’s host ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about it.  Our President and Professor Gates are turning the arrest into a larger conversation about public safety vs. racial profiling and thank goodness! Here are some glimpses into the conversation.

***The coverage of and comments by Sgt. Crowley here show the divide in burden of proof (aka: people of color are considered highly suspicious when they speak out against, in this case, racial profiling. The implication is, they use the “race card” as cover for their own mistakes).   The Boston local newser’s setup for their interview of Crowley and his remarks exemplify this.

Also! The last clip looks like it’s Press. Sec. Robert Gibbs- it’s not! It’s President Obama and is well worth the watch!

Our conversation this morning did move me to consider again what racism in law enforcement means for public safety.

You and I have different ideas about what actions are safe versus unsafe, with me sometimes teasing you for being overly cautious.  Some of this has to do with the fact that you were born and raised in New York City and I, in Charleston, SC. But skin color definately informs our feelings of security in the world.

Some of your earliest memories are of police attacking your family with ruthless violence.

Meanwhile, other than traffic tickets and routine interactions with police, the only time police officers came to my childhood home were when they were called by my family. In several instances, this occurred, after domestic disputes, and when they arrived, they were extremely supportive, not threatening or domineering.

Luck does not account for such disparate treatment, especially knowing the research that proves our experiences are not exceptional.

While Black men in America are no longer at high risk of being lynched or bludgeoned to death in the name of white women, we know they are profiled by law enforcement in a number of ways. Meanwhile, white women continue to be upheld as the pearls of society, with more resources devoted to their protection and uplift (sentences that punish attacks on white women more harshly, and affirmative action plans that benefit white women more than any other demographic).

The arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week is a concrete example of profiling, with implications for public safety as a whole. He was arrested for “disorderly conduct” on his own property in Cambridge, MA last Thursday after police came to investigate a break in. The break in was actually a door jam that the Professor himself was eventually able to work-out. When the police arrived, though the story does not state this directly, it’s clear that they did not believe he was the owner of the house.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

While the police were busy endangering Dr. Gate’s safety by harassing and then arresting him, what crimes were committed elsewhere in the area? (Other than the arresting officer’s crime).

I lived and worked for nearly two years in Lahore, Pakistan, a city whose people and culture I fell in love with.  The most common question I am asked about my time there is: “Did you feel safe?” This question misses an aspect of Lahori society that is unfortunately prevalent in the US- different levels of safety for different people based on status. In Lahore, this does relate to skin color and ethnic heritage, although the dynamics are much different than they are in the US.

To answer the question, I was afforded much more protection than the average Lahori, so no, I did not feel unsafe. I was not, like the 5,6, and 7 year olds I saw, dogding cars, trucks, moto-rickshaws and bicycles while standing in the middle of busy intersections at 11pm each night selling eggs to pay my way through elementary school.

Here in the US, some of my closest relatives will not go into urban areas because they feel they’re unsafe. Not only is this a coded, unconscious way of saying “poor people are not safe; Black people, Latino people…are not safe”, but it is inaccurate. Because of racial profiling and unequal sentencing laws (I’m guessing), white people in those poor neighborhoods where residents are predominantly people of color are less likely to encounter violence than people of color. (The fear people have that prevents them from going into these areas also keeps the numbers down, I’m sure, but that’s not the whole story).

Meanwhile,   however, while we know that segregation and a variety of other factors has meant that many poor neighborhoods, some predominantly of color, are plagued by violence. (Look at Newark, New Jersey, where just yesterday, 3 shootings killed 3 and wounded 7.) That violence is, of course, hurting the residents who live there more than anyone else. Yet the outcry is less when Black bodies move from streets to caskets, and I have yet to see a nationwide missing person search for a Black woman.

So what do we do? How do we acknowledge this failure of public safety and then act to change it? Well, for one, in our interactions, Crystal,  I should hold my tongue anytime I perceive you as being “overly” cautious. And two, I can start monitoring my local police station, retrieving data about who is arrested and why, who of the local missing persons are looked for and who are not.

We just heard tales from our local ACLU of local police routinely using “failure to use turning signal” infractions to stop and interrogate Latino drivers outside a Latino market when traffic stops are supposed to be selected at random so as not to target one demographic over another.  Again, what crimes are committed and who is made more vulnerable when our limited law enforcement resources are sqaundered in this way?

I know police officers have a tough job, are overworked and underpaid, and I don’t mean to dehumanize them just as I ask that they not dehumanize large swathes of the citizenry. But clearly, they and we (especially us white people who are navigating a world that invests more in keeping us safe) must do better.

As I find the data to back up some of the factual claims here, I will input links to the research. If anyone has data about trends in racial profiling and whether it’s gotten better or worse since Clinton’s effort to combat it, please share.

Julia

I too feel highs and lows watching the ocnfirmation hearings this week.

Judge Sotomayor Confirmation Hearing, Day 2

Senators Sessions and  Graham asking whether Sotomayor’s identity inhibits her ability to judge fairly are clear examples of white privilege and the inability to acknowledge that our life experiences enrich and limit our understanding of the world.  This is why we are interdependent- why I who have always had full physical ability cannot on my own answer questions about what public amenities are most needed for people in wheelchairs.  I who am light skinned living in a society where light skin is rewarded, taken as normal and neutral, cannot alone understand where society’s biases live and how they are perpetuated.

Thinking of oneself as naturally neutral and objective is a hallmark of white privilege. It’s a simple idea- one my boyfriend summarized beautifully. How can these Senators act like it didn’t take 130 years and a movement of women and abolitionists to include “women” in the Constitutional notion of “all men created equal.” And who led the movements to overturn the Dred Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, so on and so forth?

Does that mean that one part of our experience- our ethnic or racial or gender heritage- operates in the same way for every member of a group? Of course not. This is part of what Sotomayor argued herself in the 2002 speech with the “wise Latina” soundbyte.

On Day 1 of the hearings, Sen. Durbin’s question period was a positive for me. Durbin read the second part of Sotomayor’s 2002 speech in an effort to share the full argument. Meanwhile, Durbin’s questions tackled the disparity in crack v. cocaine sentencing, and racism and arbitrariness in the death penalty. Here was someone who has considered how race matters, and it’s no wonder he wanted to share more of the speech Sotomayor has been so hastily attacked for.

Here are clips from Judge Sotomayor’s 2002 UC Berkeley address:

“Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable…However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage. I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering?… Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.,,”

NPR’s show Tell Me More discussed this question of identity and the bench with Judge Cruz Reynoso, the man who introduced Judge Sotomayor in 2002 on the day she delivered the now oft quoted speech. This is their succinct but poignant talk.

Judge Cruz Reynoso

Some argue that focusing on identity is a barrier to a content-of-our-character based world.  What Sotomayor is arguing, I think, is that to get there, we must unveil how identity operates. This is how progress has been made on this front, historically.

We can thank people like Sen. Graham, Sen. Sessions and Howard Kurtz (see his even worse questions for Black female reporters) etc. because in their attacks on the judgement of a Latina woman or Black female reporters who are proud of the racial, ethnic, and gender facets of their humanity, they provide the starkest evidence as to why denying identity’s influence on the individual hinders our societal evolution.

There’s a blindness about the line of questioning Senator Graham engaged in, for instance, on Day 2 of the hearings. It reminds me of this Langston Hughes verse:

That Justice is a Blind Goddess

We who are Black are Wise.

Her bandage hides two festering sores

that once, perhaps, were Eyes.

Today was filled with highs and lows. Honorable Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing began today, Dr. Regina Benjamin was announced as President Obama’s Surgeon General pick, and the national board of the civil rights organization founded and led by Dr. King, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has called the LA Chapter President of the SCLC, Reverend Lee, into a dismissal hearing to defend his support of gay marriage.

I told you, highs and lows.

Both high and low was the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court. She will be confirmed.  Once confirmed she will be the first ever Latina woman, and only the third woman to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).   Definitely a high point of the day.  I listened to the confirmation hearings all day. I needed therapy when it was finished. At best, I needed a nap. I was drained emotionally. The hearing itself, was a low point. In fact, it was a sad commentary about race in America.

Sotomayor has more than 18 years of experience, prestigious academic accomplishments, and the kind of “All American” rags to riches life story that movies are made of.  She was born in the projects and raised by a single mother after her father died.  With every bit of determination in her body, she earned, with high honors, an Ivy League education, and later a prestigious 18 year law career .

All day I listened to Republicans essentially make the argument that a woman of color, in this case, a Latina woman, is incapable of governing objectively and fairly.  They’ve argued all day that her race makes her biased against White men. This is what’s so bizarre about race relations in the United States and White privilege. For more than 200 years, a mostly male and white SCOTUS was accepted as valid to interpret and apply the law in cases that have  impact on all communities, including people of color, women, and LGBTQ men and women. Yet, some how we’re suppose to believe that Sotomayor is a biased against White men!  I definitely needed help making sense of this today, so remembering the following Charles M. Blow quote helped:

Someone pinch me. I must be dreaming. Some of the same Republicans who have wielded the hot blade of racial divisiveness for years, are now calling Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, a racist. Oh, the hypocrisy!

The same Newt Gingrich who once said that bilingual education was like teaching “the language of living in a ghetto” tweeted that Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist.” The same Rush Limbaugh who once told a black caller to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back” called Sotomayor a “reverse racist.” The same Tom Tancredo, a former congressman, who once called Miami, which has a mostly Hispanic population, “a third world country” said that Sotomayor “appears to be a racist.”

This is rich.

Luckily, by the end of the day, President Obama announced that his Surgeon General pick is Dr. Regina Benjamin from the Gulf Coast.  She is a MacArthur Genius Award winner and a rural family doctor from Alabama providing medical services for some of our nations poorest citizens. Words cannot begin to convey how excited I am about this appointment. It doesn’t fully remove all the lows from today but it sure helps. Listening to President Obama introduce Dr. Benjamin really did help me overcome today’s low points, and I hope it helps you too:

]]> http://livebyubuntu.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/highs-and-lows-of-race-in-america/feed/ 0 crystalhandjuliad http://livebyubuntu.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/when-is-hate-speech-not-free-speech/ http://livebyubuntu.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/when-is-hate-speech-not-free-speech/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:39:51 +0000 crystalhandjuliad http://livebyubuntu.wordpress.com/?p=511 ]]> Dear Crystal,

Thank you for your Independence Day piece and your genuine tribute to Michael Jackson and Sarah Baartman. I felt like I was reading my college course-texts when I read that post, and was as inspired as I was informed. In fact, something happened to me yesterday that links to your July 4th post.

In the wake of the Holocaust Memorial shooting, we we’ve been talking about whether or not hate group actions are on the rise.  My childhood friend is the co-founder, editor of a Spanish language newspaper in Charleston, SC called El Informador. Yesterday, she told me how a national hate group, the National Socialist Movement (who’s web address has the tell-tale “88″ code for “Heil Hitler”), distributed flyers throughout the Charleston area on July 5th.

The flyers had headlines like “Wake Up White America”, and were all about threats to the white race. The group took a couple hundred copies of El Informador, my friend’s free paper (found in bins outside shops), placed their anti-immigrant flyer inside, rolled it up and brought it to doorsteps throughout the area.

A white supremacist blogger gave even more details than the tv news report that broke the story. Here’s a clip of the blogger’s post:

“The NSM enjoyed a productive weekend in South Carolina. First, on Sunday July 5th, 2009, a number of residents living on Old Dominion Drive in Hanahan found flyers from the NSM wrapped up inside newspapers and deposited in their driveways. All the flyers were all imprinted with a swastika. Media stories from WCBD Channel 2 in Charleston (with video), and two separate stories from the Charleston Post-Courier on July 7th and July 8th.

At least three different types of flyers were distributed. One was entitled “Wake Up Whitey“; another entitled “It’s Tax Time Whitey“, and a third entitled “The Truth About Illegal Aliens Flooding into America’s Border Daily“. In a humorously ironic twist, the latter flyers were inserted into copies of El Informador, a Spanish-language newspaper. The editor of El Informador is reportedly upset that her publication was used for that purpose. [Ed. Note: Perhaps someone ought to tell the editor of El Informador that WE'RE upset that there's even a market for her newspaper in South Carolina in the first place.]“

Local police say no laws other than littering were apparently broken, reminding me that our free speech laws protect these groups and begging  the question: when is hate speech no longer free speech? Our free speech laws do not protect, for example, screaming “Fire!” in a crowded room when there is no fire. What does that mean for instances like this?

As I work with El Informador to find this out and at least get a response regarding using somebody else’s community paper for propagandizing- I’m trying to answer these questions.

We can’t force people to love one another, and I understand how limits on civil liberties (even with good intent) can be dangerous, but certainly our laws differentiate between certain types of messages and protect people from hate speech.  We have only to think back to the Rwandan genocide and the charges the Rwandan Genocide Tribunal won against several media executives to understand the importance of this question.

Love,

Julia

I really enjoyed your memorial to Michael Jackson.  Ever since his death, the media has been one circus event after the next.  Every major network outlet, including BET, has offered their own version of a tribute to Michael Jackson’s life.  Yet not one has been able to do it without somehow mocking this human being, and in some cases mocking themselves.  BET’s horrendous award show which aired last Sunday night, June 28th,  was filled with horrible performances in tribute to MJ, but even worse, a performance by Lil Wayne and Drake rapping sexually explicit lyrics while under-aged girls danced on stage.  As a side note, BET’s outrageously bad tribute to MJ on top of their already insidious track record of perpetuating the absolute worst stereotypes of black life and culture especially their disgusting exploitation of Black women has inspired a new movement to boycott BET. My personal friend has even started a new group on Facebook called “We are horrified by BET’s “Tribute” to Michael Jackson.”

I have not read or watched one thoughtful meaningful Tribute to MJ. It usually goes something like this, “MJ was such a musical genius, he transcended race, and boy was he strange, did you see his nose.”  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I don’t get why people can’t stop talking about MJ’s face.  I understand why there’s a lot of curiosity.  I think we all do. The problem isn’t that people want to understand how or why a beautiful talented black man can change his brown skin and broad nose into skin as white as cotton with the nose to match.  I get it.  The problem is that the nature of most, if not all of these conversations in the media, talk about race and MJ as if the problem of race is in his body and not our society. Ironically, the problem of race has always been situated in the bodies of Black men and women. One powerful way we know this is in the story of Sarah Baartman aka Hotentot Venus.

I see some very disturbing parallels in Baartman’s life and death with MJ’s life and death. Both were promised wealth and fame, a better life, but little did they know that this would come at a hefty price in exchange for their bodies. It was in this exchange that they were expected to become a racialized and sexualized caricatures rooted in every racist sexist image of people of African descent.  The more racism craved to see distorted black bodies the more in demand both MJ and Baartman were for their audiences.  The more MJ destroyed blackness in his body, the more famous and beloved he became. In death, both had their bodies (Baartman literally and MJ metaphorically and figuratively) stripped naked and picked apart racially. The pathology has always been rooted in the bodies of black and brown people, and the frenzy continues to be present today.

I agree with you, the fact that MJ’s music remained connected to Black life and culture does not negate the fact that MJ was tormented racially and  part of his torment created so much racial anxiety and physical, emotional, and psychological pain that MJ became obsessed  with destroying blackness in his body to stop the pain and feed this racist frenzy to destroy Black bodies.  When that didn’t work he obsessed with numbing out with pain medication–which many believe ultimately killed  him. What brings me peace about MJ and Baartman, is that they are no longer in pain. I can only hope that MJ will be allowed to rest much sooner than Baartman. The French did not return her remains to her homeland for burial until August 2002, 187 years after she left South Africa.

I really needed to see a beautiful tribute to Michael Jackson, and finally we have one. Thank you Seidah Garret and the Agape International Choir:

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are celebrating the birthday of their oldest daughter, Malia Obama. She turned 11 years old today.

I would like to wish Malia a wonderful happy birthday and offer the following 11 birthday wishes for everyday of her life to this point:

1. I wish for you, like all brown and black girls, unconditional self-love and respect that comes from knowing who you are no matter what the rest of the world thinks or says about you.

2.  I wish for you a life filled with joyful fulfillment that you define on your own terms free from the pressure to live up to other people’s expectations of you based on your highly successful famous parents.

3. I wish for you the continued privacy that your parents have carefully controlled and demanded so that you and your sister can grow up free from the  greedy destructive invasive spectator sport of the media gaze who would like nothing more than to expose every single aspect of your life for people to comment on.

4. I wish for you that all of your dreams come true, including the ones you have yet to dream.

5. I wish for you to spend your time in the White House, as I suspect you will, with none of the stress or pressure of being a pre-teen let alone a pre-teen living in the White House, but instead enjoying every minute you get to love your dad who loves you more than anything in the world.

6. I wish for you, play dates with friends who love you not because you’re the girl who lives in the White House but because you’re kind, fun, generous, smart, and someone who loves to make everyone else laugh.

7. I wish for you that you will never deny parts of yourself as you grow up and your face and body changes.  I wish that you always love what you see in the mirror and if you have trouble that you turn to your parents and fall in love with yourself every time they look at you.

8. I wish for you to never own other people’s stuff as there will always be those that will attempt to project their racial anxieties onto you.

9. I wish for you the wisdom, strength, and support to always ask for help or get your needs met especially when you don’t look like you need the help or support.

10. I wish for you the patience you’ll need with people who will invariably say stupid ignorant things like “I don’t think of your father as a color, but he’s White too and really articulate” or “I don’t like it when people act like your father isn’t white too.”

11. I wish for you nothing but happiness on your birthday and that you always know your power and that you’re a beautiful flower!:

Today is the fourth of July. On this day, I always think about Frederick Douglass’s speech, “The Meaning of July fourth for the Negro.”  On July 5, 1852, Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, held at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall.  For me, this is the most compelling section of his speech:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

For the full speech, you can find it here. When you read this speech side by side with all the inequities in the world today, like the wealth gap, the rates of incarceration and race, the man made disaster of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina,  rates of HIV and AIDS in the African American community, urban decay, the denial of full citizenship for LGBT families, and the ongoing psychological and emotional violence of racism it becomes clear that Douglass’s speech is as relevant today as it was in 1852.

In fact, we can do that. Professor Melissa Harris Lacewell who teaches Political Science at Princeton University has put patriotism in context of our lives today. Harris-Lacewell’s piece, “Celebrating the full narrative of America” is published here, but for your convenience you can find it below.

No July Fourth experience in America should be allowed to pass without a deep loving analysis of the beauty of how far we’ve come alongside the ways we have yet to fulfill our promises of freedom to all.  We continue to dishonor our own respect and integrity as a nation when we restrict access to full citizenship to some while we privilege others based on race, gender, sexual orientation and class. Harris-Lacewell does a beautiful job discussing our nations schizophrenic relationship with freedom, justice, and equality for all.  I think her analysis is the perfect companion to Douglass, and so I share this with you and our Ubuntu friends.

Celebrating the full narrative of America by Melissa Harris Lacewell

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
– Langston Hughes

As a child I was never conflicted about July 4th. Independence Day celebrations were a marker of freedom from school, an opportunity for grilling food over an open flame, and my one annual chance to see fireworks in the school field near my home. But like many African Americans my relationship to this holiday became more complicated as I learned about the histories of human enslavement, suffering, and inequality that are woven so tightly into the American fabric.

As a student I read Frederick Douglass’ 1852 address asking, “What to the slave is the 4th of July?” Douglass speaks with great love for and pride in a nation founded on principles of freedom, sovereignty of the people, and the fallibility of the state. But he also reminds us that celebrating America requires us to tell the whole story– “Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.”

The mournful wail of millions still resounds across the American landscape.

During the 2008 presidential campaign Michelle Obama reflected on America’s enthusiastic response to her husband’s candidacy and remarked that for the first time in her adult life she felt proud of her country. Many white Americans were baffled and offended by her comments. After all Michelle Obama is a graduate of both Princeton University and Harvard Law School, she held a high-paying job, educates her children at private schools, and, at that time, was married to a black man with a real shot of being President. With all her apparent opportunities and accomplishments, why wouldn’t Michelle Obama have long been a flag-waving patriot?

But I, like many African Americans, fully understood Michelle Obama’s statement. We heard the complex and deep love for her nation that her sentiment reflected.

In November Americans shattered a substantial barrier. We elected the first African American President of the United States. Coming together in an enormous multiracial coalition of Americans young and old, gay and straight, urban and rural, male and female, we reaffirmed candidate Barack Obama’s insight: “in the unlikely story that is America there has never been anything false about hope.”

Whatever the outcome of his presidency, the victory itself was a meaningful step in America’s racial history. It would be so easy to join in the jubilee shout. But even though my President is black, my spirit is still blue.

The mournful wail of millions still resounds across the American landscape.

In the United States today the median wealth of even modest white families is ten times that of black families and twelve times that of Hispanic families. People with disabilities are routinely denied housing and employment even though the law is supposed to protect against such violations.

In the United States today there are women forced to give birth handcuffed to jail beds and their only crime is working long hours for little pay without official documentation. In states across our country lesbian and gay individuals can be fired, denied housing, and lose custody of their children with impunity simply because of their identity.

The mournful wail of millions still resounds across the American landscape.

This 4th of July weekend I temporarily relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana where I will live, work, and write this summer. Even though I was raised in the South, the long road trip through the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana evokes difficult emotions.

Driving south the tea grows sweeter but the history more bitter. Southern trees bore strange fruit; rebel flags on trucks and state houses alike are still bloody with settled debts. Just a few short years ago we watched New Orleans drown and we still have not kept our collective promise to fully and fairly restore this unique American city. It is not only the South that bears America’s racial scar. Cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit share vicious histories of violence and of contemporary inequality.

The mournful wail of millions still resounds across the American landscape.

The story of our country is an amazing narrative of great young men so inspired by an age of ideas that they threw off the yoke of colonialism and founded a free nation. But the land on which they formed this union was stolen, the hands with which they built this nation were enslaved, and the women who birthed its citizens were second-class.

And all of this is our story. Each of us participates in all parts of the narrative, as both oppressor and oppressed. This is the imperfect fabric of our nation. At times we have torn and stained it. At other moments we mend and repair it. But it is ours. The imperialism, the genocide, the slavery, but also the liberation, the hope, and the deeply American belief that our best days still lie in front of us.

This year I will wave a flag without a hint of irony, not because I have forgotten my nation’s many wrongs, but because I remember them. I am proud of my country, not for its perfection, but because my story is uniquely written here, in this place as in no other. I will celebrate because the alternative is too grim. The alternative is to give up on the dream of a nation founded in the belief that all are created equal.

The mournful wail of millions still resounds across the American landscape.

We cannot drown out these voices with patriotic jubilation; instead the work of American patriotism is to respond.