About a week ago a friend on Facebook posted one of those memes making declarations about the flag and what it stands for. While I don’t disagree at one level, I believe that the biggest problem today is that we are unable to separate the progress and achievements of the past from the current reality that some of the goals memorialized in the past are still a work in progress.
The text of the post was: ”This flag does not represent slavery. It represents the Independence of an entire nation, against an adversary that wanted to enslave us all. It represents freedom.”
The flag in question was one of those with the 13 stars in a circle on the field of blue.
The first sentence is true. It was the flag of a nation-to-be. It was not about slavery. Slavery was an issue in much of the world at the time, and the blinders that kept the founders from being overwhelmed by the incongruity allowed them to provide a pretty good framework for moving forward. From the dream of “a more perfect union” through many steps to today, which we must admit is a “more perfect union” than what existed as they wrote those words. Yet there are steps remaining.
It was the independence of an entire nation. But the claim of slavery of all of us is somewhat inflammatory. Even to this day, those who move from their country of citizenship are deemed to remain citizens of their country of origin. Citizenship is not slavery. How (and if) the normal legal rules of the 1700s allowed for the surrender of citizenship, and therefore the right to be a citizen of another is not a matter of slavery. The same can be said of the general claims of nations that the finding and colonizing otherwise uninhabited lands make that land part of the “home” country. (There is a lot to be said about the fact that North America was not uninhabited even if not organized with the kinds of government and progress of Europe.)
The last sentence, “It represents freedom” is true and untrue. As far as the purpose and goals of the American Revolution, it is true. We, as a nation, gained independence —freedom — from England. And that is the purpose of the celebration each year on July 4. And as long as we recognize that the celebration is a remembrance of an event in history, the statement is correct.
But when we throw this out into the fray of turmoil over the continued struggles to make at least some of the ideals of that revolution and eventual constitution real, it too often is understood as a declaration that the Revolutionary War did it all, or at least with the addition of the Civil War. Slavery is ended. And in the sense of literally owning people who work forced labor for meager room and board, it is true.
That flag represents the struggle for independence from England. It represents the will of the people to strive for a more perfect union. But if all we do is revere it while denying the need to continue in that striving for more perfection, then we are in the process of becoming the English government that needs to be rejected. The government that denied the rights of its citizens.
The country is not a flag. This country began with ideals that it somewhat admitted that it had not attained when it declared a slave to be 3/5th a person. That was rectified in the 14th amendment almost 80 years later, but some of the desire to keep parts of society less than equal still remains.
On the eve of the 4th, I, my wife, and her mother went to the local music and fireworks celebration. We listened as a band played a range of music. We noted that to be less pressed in the crowd (there is still a pandemic underway) our somewhat distant palace on the large lawn made a lot of the music and talking almost indecipherable. I guess they needed a better sound system. And it wasn’t helped by the almost overwhelming noise of the crowd. At one point, the band stopped and three ladies stood at the front of the stage silently. And as the crowd slowly quieted a little, we discovered that they were not silent, but were already halfway through an a Capella rendition of the national anthem. We stood and I sang a bass line along with the rest and enjoyed the fireworks that began moments later to the accompaniment of a list of newer patriotic favorites, beginning with Ray Charles singing “America.”
As the Independence Day celebration continues each year, we should be proud of the ideals that our founders embedded in our contract for government. And we should relish the freedoms we have as a result of their sacrifice. But we should also be willing and even vigilant to support the continued efforts still required to bring our "more perfect union" to completion. We may be honest in our declarations that all are created equal. But after creation, not so much. It is time to make that equality — in status and opportunity, not in outcome — just. To truly have liberty and justice for all.
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