Weeping in America is nothing new. Yet, either because we forget history or were fed a sanitized “America the Beautiful” version, we are not aware of all the tears that were shed because of the barbarism of Americans. I love America and her ideals, but that love must confront and reckon with the brutality committed in her name and by her government and so many of her citizens. We must not let our “white fragility” avert our eyes. Like the Holocaust deniers, we must not deny those chapters of our history that are ugly, brutal, dehumanizing, and worse. To hide behind bromides like, “I didn’t own slaves,” is to ignore history, its consequences, and one’s internalization of the privilege that White Supremacy has bestowed.” Living in a country and benefitting from it, yet willfully ignoring or denying the tragic parts of the history by which one benefits, is moral cowardice. But I digress.
So many of the African American spirituals sing of struggle and sorrow, an ongoing lamentation over 246 years of “chattel” slavery, which meant that a black human being was property and owned for life. How many tears were wept from 1619 forward—for 246 years of whippings, family separation, rape, lynchings, erasing of culture and religion, forced conversion to Christianity, and other acts of cruelty? The weeping continued through the Jim Crow era from the 1880s to the mid-1960s with its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” ruling, voter suppression, lynchings, and discrimination in every aspect of life for those 85 years. The successes of the Civil Rights movement offered a brief respite that the current Roberts’ Supreme Court has systematically chipped away.
For Native Americans, war with European settlers began with the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609-1614) and continued to the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890—281 years of war, forced relocation, theft of land, broken treaties, and systemic suppression of Native American cultures. The Trail of Tears (1831-1850) marked the relocation of Native Americans from states in the Southeast to “Indian Territory” West of the Mississippi. Of the five tribes relocated, over 4,000 members of the Cherokee died. Members of the other tribes also died. This trail symbolized the genocide experienced by Native Americans by white Europeans—almost three centuries of weeping. But there is more. The Indian Boarding School system, which began in 1869, sought to assimilate Native American children by removing them from their families, cultures, and languages—to cut their hair, to change their name, to substitute the love of a family with institutional neglect, to try to make them white and Christian, to break their spirit, to destroy their soul, to cause the death of those who could not, would not comply—was cruel beyond imagination or words. Do you understand that America has a brutal history of family separation?
For Asian Americans, the weeping was prompted by discrimination like the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), the Immigration Act of 1924, which continued until 1965 and placed explicit bans on all Asian immigration to the U.S., and the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans (1942-1945) during World War II. While there were many reasons why the millions of German Americans were not interred during World War II, it cannot be denied that the color of their skin was one reason.
And for Latinos, the weeping included the Mexican-American War and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which transferred approximately 525,000 square miles of land from Mexico to the United States, creating our Southwest. Many Mexicans left in this new section of America lost their land and faced systemic discrimination. During World War II, because of severe labor shortages, the U.S. brought millions of Mexican laborers to work. It was called the Bracero Program (1942-1964)— “bracero” comes from the Spanish word “brazo,” meaning “arm.” During the program, 4.5 million Mexican laborers were admitted to work in the U.S. through formal contracts. Though promised fair treatment, the braceros often faced harsh conditions, low pay, and abuse. The Bracero program also resulted in illegal immigration from Mexico because the demand for farm workers exceeded what the Bracero program supplied. The number of Illegal immigrants during this period approached 5 million. In 1954-1955, Operation Wetback deported 1.3 million illegal immigrants back to Mexico. It also swept up those who were legally in the U.S. and U.S. citizens. As the operation progressed, there were increasing reports of human rights violations, including deportation of U.S. citizens, unjust treatment of legal residents, and mistreatment of immigrants. Many were deported without hearings, leading to accusations that the program violated basic civil rights and due process. For more than 100 years, the availability of work in the United States has been one of the major factors that has sustained illegal immigration. And now, there is the prospect of the deportation of 15-20 million or so brown and black people, including, I assume, the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, perhaps even beginning with them.
I weep for all the suffering inflicted and the suffering to come because of what a majority of Americans chose in this election. Whatever Trump does, they will be responsible. Would they have made this choice if they actually knew America’s un-sanitized history, if they actually knew the weeping that similar decisions caused in the past? If they had spent any time reflecting on how badly their own immigrant ancestors may have been treated. I want to think that they would have voted differently, but I fear that they would still have voted for Trump—America the …?
In July 1968, in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the riots that followed, James Baldwin said to America, “All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history…. Your history has led you to this moment, and you can only begin to change yourself and save yourself by looking at what you are doing in the name of your history.”
Though it is hard to see at a distance, I believe that Lady Liberty is weeping …again.
