A Great American Endeavor

[TygrBright]

The narrative of "America" (the concept, not the geopolitical entity) is one of Great Endeavors. In its earliest days, America symbolized a Promised Land of opportunity where those rejecting (or forcibly rejected by) European monarchies and established class hierarchies and social orders could take charge of their own destinies, build communities and lives to their own definitions.

Then wrest the control of those communities from the British Crown, and define their new nation based on ideals absent from the old world social systems, in the Great Endeavor of the Revolution.

Unfettered by family oligarchies and class-bound wealth structures, the new idea of America could focus on using available space and resources to expand and build new wealth. America could innovate commerce, transportation, education, science, agriculture and industry, to create a broader economic base than any enjoyed in the old world - a Great Endeavor hampered only by America's "hangover" of family oligarchies and class-bound wealth structures in the Southern agrarian economy built on enslaved labor.

And so another costly and heartbreaking Great Endeavor, fueled by both moral and economic necessity - the eradication of enslaved labor from the economy.

Yet another Great Endeavor, the Westward Expansion in the post-Civil War era, fueled dreams and myths about the idea of America and cemented them into our national identity. It attracted waves of immigration bringing hard work, ingenuity, and creativity from many nations to flourish here.

With the Twentieth Century America's Great Endeavors turned to the definition of America's role and place in the larger world again, as we engaged with the "War to End Wars" and built new ties with the old world, infusing them with some of the ideas of America.

In the wake of economic collapse America took on the Great Endeavor of re-shaping its economic base to broaden economic opportunity and prevent the pooling of wealth and privilege and the creation of a new oligarchy.

In the face of a tide of fascism, America took on the Great Endeavor of turning back that tide, shoulder-to-shoulder with other nations rejecting its most inhuman horrors.

After a victory won with painful moral compromises and the opening of a Pandora's Box of potential destruction, America embraced another Great Endeavor of containing totalitarian expansion and building a worldwide network of liberal democratic allies and partners.

These Great Endeavors all had noble elements to them. But they were all hampered by one dark reality: The ideal of America was always a chimera supported by denial of our own cruel, oppressive reality.

We defined our new nation's ideals of freedom to explicitly apply only to white people. Our Shining City on the Hill was built on the sweat and suffering of those excluded from its benefits. But as long as we never talk about our Shining White Supremacy on the Hill, we can pretend that all those ideas of America are our reality.

The creation of our vast economic base was made possible not only by enslaved labor and the exploitation of immigrants, non-whites and the poor, but by the genocide of nation after nation of indigenous people who had stewarded the continent for centuries before the arrival of European colonial powers. America began the process of destroying the health and sustainability of the very land and resources that made our nation possible.

The Civil War ended the structure of enslaved labor. But it not only did nothing to redress the wrongs of more than two centuries of horror, its aftermath deliberately codified, enabled and promoted a systemic class system based on a concept of 'race' that manifested only as skin color and ancestry. We got to have our cake and eat it - credit for the undeniable good of ending slavery, while we maintained and even turbocharged the evil of white supremacy.

The great Westward Expansion nearly completed the extermination of indigenous nations. It brought in new influxes of not-white labor that could be exploited and oppressed with impunity. And it institutionalized some of the most destructive interpretations of "individual freedoms" (at the expense of the well-being of the community, the sustainability of the land, and a respect-worthy rule of law) into our national identity.

We re-engaged with the old world nations only to enmesh ourselves in the repulsive values of colonialism and the unchecked predatory capitalism that brought about a worldwide economic collapse. In supporting our European colonialist allies we sowed the Dragon's Teeth.

Our attempts to build a more equitable economic base were laudable as far as they went, which was mostly to white people. Much of the New Deal and the economic recovery preceding WWII excluded non-white Americans. Judge Lynch still held court and Jim Crow continued to flourish.

We fought back a great evil and somewhat fumblingly brought a historic genocide to a halt at the cost of our own genocide in Japan and the creation of powers capable of ending this planet's ability to support life.

We outspent, out-developed, and out-colonialized Communism with our European democratic allies, at the expense of nascent self-determination movements in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. Of course, they weren't white.

Are you seeing a theme develop here?

Every Great Endeavor of America has been flawed or broken on the rocks of white supremacy.

Now America MUST turn to the greatest of endeavors: Ending white supremacy itself.

Without that, we have no more Great Endeavors and perhaps even no future - as a nation or even as a human species.

I believe America CAN do this. I believe we can build a better, greater, more wonderful idea AND reality of America that will lead us into a future of sustainability, equity, and prosperity. If we succeed we will inspire a world to reject white supremacy and build a shared future for our planet and its life. And maybe take us to the stars, and greater and more amazing places than we can imagine now.

It starts with us, and this greatest of all American Endeavors.

hopefully,
Bright

[Ocelot II]

1. Excellent, very thoughtful comment. Thank you.

[Hekate]

2. Your rendition of our history's both beautiful & heartbreaking, Bright.We can.We must.I hope we will

We can. We must. I hope we will.

Thank you.

[Easterncedar]

3. Brilliant

What inspired this? I mean, for you right now? It’s so full of truth. Thanks.

[TygrBright]

4. This is a constant in my life these days, Easterncedar...

Right now I am revisiting the city I grew up in as a child. At the time it seemed to me a kind, safe, decent place that modeled values of equality and compassion. The tree-lined streets of family homes intermixed with apartment dwellings, the little commerce blocks of local businesses in walking distance, the parks and schools and churches seemed like the best of all possible worlds and defined 'normality' to me for decades.

What I did not see was how WHITE my childhood normality was. I was unaware of the black neighborhoods bulldozed and relocated so that the freeway system could link our city to the rest of America. I did not realize how inequitably the benefits of our "free society" were distributed. We were 'poor' I thought, because we often ran out of grocery money between my Mom's paychecks and had to eat tinned beans and other less-than-wonderful meals. I wore hand-me-down winter coats from older cousins.

My school fees to a private religious school were paid by my divorced (SCANDAL!) working Mom's family so we would have a chance to 'grow up right', and we were gifted with summer vacations at the Lake by joining aunts, uncles and cousins when they took theirs. I didn't really mind, but I thought we were 'poor' compared to the other little white children in our private school.

I did not realize what real poverty is, because in our city and neighborhood few white families experienced anything like it. The mild deprivation of having a lower-working-class income was cushioned by extended family prosperity. There was little or no real poverty around me, and NO people of color.

I was raised to support the Civil Rights movement and believe Martin Luther King was a great leader. My family never voted anything but Democratic, and never crossed picket lines.

For years, I thought that made me 'not a racist.'

I did eventually learn better, but I am still angry about a system that taught me only that my experience was right and normal and proper - and never alluded to the pain and suffering and inequity our comfort was built upon. And never gave me a choice or a chance to embrace any kind of meaningful change - because it was kept far away from us in places 'less fortunate'.

I see all this again with fresh eyes revisiting my childhood home and it still resonates.

sadly,
Bright

[Easterncedar]

5. So similar to my story!

My parents were white leaders of the civil rights movement in my rust belt hometown, which had its idyllic as well as its grubby side. My parents fought to desegregate the schools. My father was the executive director of of the human rights commission. I had very few close black friends though and our neighborhood was all white. I was bussed, as part of a volunteer group, to a black elementary school, for 5th and 6th grade. That was a challenge, but I was proud of the experience when I was young.

But ultimately it was pretty thin experience and didn’t do much to break down any barriers. I moved to a rural place and, as it happened, my whole life has been one of segregation, which hits me hard when I go home, where the town has been hollowed out by poverty and white flight, and I am confronted by awareness of my privilege and ignorance. The worst was a couple of years ago when I was led to read the writing of a man who grew up on the Tuscarora reservation 5 miles from my home, only a few years younger than myself. I had no idea at all of the poverty and isolation of that place. I had no idea what the kids who seemed so threatening to me in junior high school had experienced. It’s so shaming. But enlightening. I really am grateful for it.

[TygrBright]

6. It is never too late to learn, I am discovering. n/t