The recurring theme in the Republican Convention seems to be to attack Michelle Obama by the speakers saying, "I've ALWAYS been proud of America," or "There's never been a day in my life that I haven't been proud of America."
Well, my Republican fellow Americans, although I've always loved this country for its promise, there have been A LOT of days that I haven't been proud of America. I wasn't proud of America when in the early years of elementary school, this Yankee had his first exposure to Jim Crow. We were on the way to Florida from Illinois, and upon stopping somewhere in the Old Confederacy, I approaced a water fountain that said "Colored Water." When my mother said that I had to drink from the fountain that said "White Water," I replied that I wanted to see what color the water was. When she told me what the sign meant, I asked the obvious question: "Why can't everybody drink from the same water fountain?" In my childish way, I wasn't proud of America when she responded, "That's just the way things are in this part of our country."
I wasn't proud of America when, as a 6th grader, I won a trip to New Orleans selling subscriptions to my hometown newspaper in which the African-American newspaper carriers had to go on another trip, because they couldn't stay in the segregated hotels or eat in the segregated restaurants that the rest of us ate in while we were in New Orleans. And I wasn't proud of America when, on that trip, the newspaper had to get special approval that one of my fellow newspaper carriers and winners of the trip who was of South Asian ancestry was really Caucasian (despite having darker skin than many African-Americans) to get him to stay in our hotel. And I CERTAINLY wasn't proud of America when, on that trip, some New Orleans cop refused to let him use the "White Men's Room" in a New Orleans city park because "You n*****s have to use the 'Colored Men's Room.'"
I wasn't proud of America when little African-American girls were blown up in their churches while attending Sunday School because there had been a voting rights meeting in their church, and I wasn't proud of America when civil rights workers were brutally murdered for the horrible "crime" of registering African-Americans to vote.
I don't want to limit my criticisms to the South. I wasn't proud of America when I discovered that my well-stocked elementary school library in the heart of the Land of Lincoln was duplicated in the other majority White elementary schools, but that there was no library in the one virtually all-black elementary school.
I also wasn't proud of my country when I leared of my country's role in overthrowing democratically-elected governments in Guatemala, Iran, and Chile (among others).
I wasn't even proud of my country TODAY. During the past several months, I've been volunteering visiting merchant ships and seeing to the needs of foreign seafarers in our local port. Today, again (as has been true before), I was on board a ship where NOBODY had visas -- not the captain of the ship, not the other officers, not the ordinary seafarers, not ANYBODY. These guys are bringing us much-needed commodities. They are all allowed to go ashore in Europe, or Latin America, but although we want the commodities that they deliver to us, our government doesn't regard them as worthy of being trusted to go to the local Wal-Mart or Best Buy to purchase personal items that they need, or that they'd like to take back to their wives or other family members.
Instead of me being able to take them to a local store to buy what they want, they had to write out a shopping list in a language with which they clearly weren't all that familiar, and tomorrow, I've got to figure out from that list what they actually want, buy it for them, and take it to their ship.
At our best, when we are striving to live up to the beautiful promise of our Declaration of Independence, I have an incredible love for this country, which is worthy of the pride of all of its citizens. But we're not always at our best, and when we're at our worst, we're not worthy of ANYBODY'S pride.