State of “Our” Union
A few words on exclusion
President Obama addressed “one American family” on Tuesday night: a family he insisted includes American Muslims, undocumented immigrants, and America’s most vulnerable populations. While I am grateful for these words, America has never been a unified family. Nor have we been, as President Obama patriotically claimed, the world’s “moral example” of freedom, justice, and dignity. Our history of genocide and displacement acted upon Native Americans, slavery, and dehumanizing immigration policy (to name a few of many injustices against communities of color) stand in direct opposition to these values. “Our history” is not the history of America; it is merely a myth that white people have chosen for us to remember. If you deny that history is malleable by the whim of those in power, you don’t have to go as far as a Texas textbook to see that certain omnipresent stories, of Columbus, of the American hero, of the pioneer, and of his dream, reinforce the idea of a unified cultural identity. However, this reading of history neglects the narratives of people of color, denying them the ability to define their own identity and dreams, and forcing a form of assimilation that renders their cultures inferior.
Obama was always my man. But it is my commitment to core Democratic values that keep me critical of my President, and the Democratic Party at large. If we are supposedly “poised for progress,” if our leaders are indeed to be “a light to the world,” and if we are really willing to measure our success by the success of all of our people, we need to stop accepting and rearticulating hegemonic rhetoric. We need to check our power systems, proclaim the American Dream was never a universal dream, and stop looking backwards to an unacceptable history.