The quotation in the title of this post comes from Michael Lind's The Next American Nation. The full quotation is even better:
“Even if our genetic grandparents came from Finland or Indonesia, as Americans, we are all descendants of George Washington—and his slaves."
The quotation reflects a vision of how we define "the American people" and our ties both to one another and our history, a vision I share. Furthermore, it is a vision that encapsulates what I call Obama's America. In part, this post is to announce that my book
Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity has finally been published. I've done a comprehensive analysis of the 44th president's writings, speeches, and other public remarks in order to explain his conception of American national identity.
The Lind quotation is special to me because it put me on a path of study that led me, a decade and a half later, to write that book. The quotation inspired me, and led me to believe that Americans must strengthen our sense of being one people, but in a very specific way, one that emphasized unity across lines of ancestry and culture. It also spoke to a specific understanding of our history, one that was honest and balanced, one that all our people could recognize as their own.
I can't say that I was consciously waiting for a politician to come along who might speak about our national identity and our history in those terms. But we definitely got one in Barack Obama. On the night of January 3, 2008, after his surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses, here's what he said about our history:
Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire. What led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation. What led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause.
As a historian and scholar of national identity, that got me thinking. This guy's got something. That's an interesting historical narrative to present in a victory speech. I need to know more about this Obama.
Then there was the speech Senator Obama gave on February 12, 2008, the night he won the Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. primaries:
That’s how this country was founded, a group of patriots declaring independence against the mighty British empire.…That’s how slaves and abolitionists resisted that wicked system and how a new president chartered a course to ensure we would not remain half-slave and half-free. That’s how the greatest generation…overcame Hitler and fascism and also lifted themselves up out of a Great Depression. That’s how pioneers went west when people told them it was dangerous….That’s how immigrants traveled from distant shores when people said their fates would be uncertain….That’s how women won the right to vote, how workers won the right to organize, how young people like you traveled down South to march, and sit in, and go to jail, and some were beaten, and some died for freedom’s cause. That’s what hope is
After hearing that speech, I was all in. Twelve years after first reading Michael Lind's book, with the quotation I put in the title of this post, I was hearing a politician, a possible President of the United States, who got it. His telling of our history combined both "traditional" events and the story of how the disadvantaged won equality into a singly, unifying narrative. And he gave this speech not on July 4 or another commemorative occasion. It was central to his political campaign and his presentation of himself to the country. Whether or not Obama read Lind is irrelevant. I could see the connection between their ideas.
One other thing Lind wrote stuck with me as well, namely that the inclusive American national identity he was calling for:
So far lacks not only a self-conscious communal identity as something other than a mere citizenry and more than an aggregate of people of different colors, it also lacks its own national story, its own understanding of its origins and its possible future.
What I saw on February 12, 2008, was a candidate for President of the United States who understood the need for us to have that story, and one who could not only tell it, but make it all the more real were he to win the presidency himself.
Rhetoric and language aren't everything. Speaking about inclusion and unity won't, by itself, create a job, feed a hungry person, or educate a child. But rhetoric and language matter. By strengthening the bonds we feel toward one another as Americans, they lay the groundwork for accomplishing those and other all-important goals. That's no easy task.
At the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the first time most of us (including me) heard Barack Obama speak, he made clear exactly how we connect the rhetoric of inclusion with the policies we support:
Alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the South Side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it’s not my grandparent. If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief—I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper—that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, and yet still come together as one American family. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.
We don't all look like one another, worship like one another, or agree with one another on a whole host of matters. We aren't born with an American flag stamped on our forehead that tells us we're Americans. But it matters that we believe we are one people.
Barack Obama is strengthening our collective sense that we are one people. In my research, I came across one other short quotation that I'd like to share here, one that really struck me as capturing that idea. Carl Bell, a psychiatrist, told journalist Ellis Cose (who, coincidentally, wrote the Foreword to my book) the following:
“Malcolm [X] made the point of saying ‘the nation’ instead of ‘our nation.’ When Barack got elected, I started saying ‘our nation,’ because it’s a huge step closer to actualizing the ideal.”
We're not there yet. We've got a ways to go. But we're on our way. And I hope, I believe, we're going to get there.