Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa

Hawthorn Hill Journal: Of the Olympics, Patriotism

The Olympics are over, yet some impressions linger. One in particular comes to mind. Like many of us, I watched both the men’s and women’s soccer matches. The men made it to the knockout stage and the women fought hard and won the gold medal. Both teams have a lot to be proud of. The source of pride in something or someone is not always rooted in winning or losing. Winning is nice, but so is doing the best one can and feeling good about that. I watched every match and feel a deep sense of pride in both teams’ accomplishments. But that is not what I wish to discuss here. Rather, it is what I saw and felt when the television cameras would pan the stands, enabling us to catch glimpses of the thousands of USA fans who attended the games, as well as those who filled the main stadium to watch track and field events. The image of athletes making the rounds of the stands draped with American flags was wonderful to see. It was equally encouraging to see athletes of different nations proudly display their flags as well. Pride in accomplishment is not a solely American virtue.

What struck me the most was this: the ethnic and racial diversity of these rabid, cheering, happy, proud Americans. White faces, black faces, yellow faces, what a wonderful pallet of what America is and always has been about, a stewpot of all kinds of people from incredibly diverse backgrounds, all sharing in the joy they feel at the accomplishments of their fellow citizens. This color thing has always puzzled me. I guess I am considered white, but when I stand beside a really white object, I’m anything but white. We all come in different shades and hues. I’m too old to think we might get over this color thing while I am around. We are not, contrary to what some would delude themselves into believing, a white country. Far from it. Ideology is all too often grounded in fear of that which is different, when difference is really what makes the world so profoundly interesting and worth, well, fighting for.

One need not view camera sweeps of crowds at sporting events to witness the reality of American diversity. Walk down any city street, visit any mall, be a passenger on a plane, train or bus, spend time between flights at any airport, park outside a mall or big box store—any place where large segments of the population gather—and it is clear to the eye, and the mind, if it is open, that we are not the homogeneous crowd some would like to believe us to be. Although I have never done one of those ancestry tracing tests, I can thank at least three starkly different cultural groups for my existence. Anyone who takes the time to read up a bit on American history, especially our most formative years, knows full well the remarkable contributions that immigrants have made to our development as the strongest economy in the world. We remain the bastion of hope for so many as an enduring democracy that protects and promises freedom for all, no matter their color, religion, ethnicity or sexual preference. That is what is so disturbing about the ascendance in certain quarters of this notion that we are, and always have been, a sacred, cosmologically determined bastion of whiteness. History debunks that notion amply well enough. Trouble is, far too few of us are willing to take the time to give history a chance. Takes too much time. But then again, most things worth doing take a bit of time.

Being American has nothing at all to do with color, race, religion, or any other manifestation of one’s being. It has to do with one’s accepting the essential tenets of this democracy we so deeply revere. No need to list them here. Just check out the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As Lewis Lapham wrote several years ago in an “Atlantic” essay, it is about our “shared vision” of what this extraordinary experiment called America is all about. Dissent, i.e. disagreement, is essential to the stability of a functioning democracy. Disagreeing with one another is fine; hating one another because we have different ideas about how to approach common problems is, well, both silly and counterproductive. It leads nowhere and solves nothing. Childishness appears to be on the rise.

I hope in time we wash away, through some sort of organic cultural process, this notion of the superiority of whiteness. Aside from its obvious invalidity, it serves no constructive purpose. One of the beauties of a culturally diverse citizenry is the ability to enjoy one another without compromising one’s basic cultural identity. We can be different, live apart and differently, but still, you know, e pluribus unum. We can share the same vision of America without compromising one another’s essential being. Kinda cool, actually.

Dick deRosa’s Hawthorn Hill essays have appeared in “The Freeman’s Journal” since 1998. A collection, “Hawthorn Hill Journal: Selected Essays,” was published in 2012. He is a retired English teacher.