“I Am the Darker Brother, I Too Am America”

“I Am the Darker Brother, I Too Am America”

There has been a lot of public discourse aired on radio, television and print media networks from so called “Christian conservatives,” or “American patriots” including Bill Bennett, Pat Buchannan, Rusch Limbaugh, and Jim Dobson—condemning Barack Obama for not being a true Christian or American. In fact just a few days ago I listened to Bill Bennett on a cable news show commenting on the need for Barack Obama to “show and not talk about his patriotism and loyalty to America.”

Unfortunately, these self-acclaimed patriots and Christian conservatives are by no stretch of the imagination lone voices crying out in the wilderness without an audience. They represent a dangerously large constituency—mostly White and disproportionately male—whose political ideologies and religious beliefs are rooted in a racist, patriarchal and hegemonic system that breeds intolerance, ignorance and ire all under the guise of Christianity and patriotism. This group of “Christian conservatives” and “patriots” doesn’t use the bible to win souls to Christ or to demonstrate their reference to God, the Creator AND His creation. Instead, they use religion and their so called patriotic ideals to justify every ill deed that has been engineered and perpetrated by mankind throughout the world on a colossal scale from slavery, oppression of women and children, exploitation of the poor, wars, inhumane treatment and torture of prisoners, etc.

And for some reason these people—Bennett, Dobson, Buchanan, Limbaugh etc. etc.—really believe that America belongs to White folk and that White “Christian” conservatives is the only religious group that hears from and understands the intentions of God. Sadly (for those who espouse such beliefs), most biblical scholars will attest that this idiotic notion of a God-ordained white supremacy and white privilege has absolutely no sound biblical backing and is in direct contrast to virtually every thing that is recorded as the teachings of Christ and the words of God in most religious documents.

The month of July ushers in the Fourth of July holiday, which is a time when Americans celebrate the supreme ideals of freedom, democracy, justice, liberty, prosperity, equality on which this nation was founded. It is during this time that we should be mindful however that contrary to what some people proclaim, America is not a land merely for Whites or evangelical/ conservative “Christians” but it is a land that was built by and for an ethnic and economically diverse “people yearning to be free.”

America belongs to the descendants of the slaves who were brought over en masse and forced into more than 200 years of free labor that helped to catapult America to the top of the world order as an economic superpower—a position it maintains to this very day.

America belongs to the offspring of the indigenous native Americans who were robbed of their land and faced near genocide after extending their hands to help the earlier settlers acclimate to the unfamiliar terrain of the New World.

America belongs to the descendants of the immigrants who came over via Ellis Island and Angel Island and worked in the urban cities to expedite industrialization in America. America belongs to the descendants of share croppers who helped to ensure the continued availability of cheap labor and value surplus in the South after the Civil War.

Furthermore as Ronald Takai points out in his book “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America,” the signs of America’s ethnic diversity can be discerned across the continent in places like Chinatown, Harlem, South Boston, or in places with Spanish names like San Antonio and Los Angeles or with Indian names like Massachusetts and Iowa. Takai argues that much of what is familiar in America’s cultural landscape actually has ethnic origins from fireworks to Jazz and songs like “God Bless America,” or “White Christmas,” which was written by a Russian-Jewish immigrant named Israel Baline, more popularly known as Irving Berlin.

As the months draw us closer to the November election and to the realization that a non-white male could actually become the president of the United States, I am sure that the Bennett, Buchannan, Limbaugh and Dobson Klans (spelling intentional) will make numerous television appearances and spew out their white-supremacy venom all over the radio airwaves proclaiming to be the voice of the only true patriots or pure Americans and God’s “chosen ones.”

However, I am hopeful that their voices will be drowned out by the voices of the rest of us—the Other Americans—who embody the message that Obama has so skillfully promoted. A message found in the preamble of our Constitution: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our nation was built and strengthened by its diversity. Those forces that unite us are much greater than those that divide us. And as one of America’s gifted sons, Langston Hughes so eloquently stated: “I am the darker brother (humanity). I too am America. I too, sing America."