I am an American. There, I said it. Fifty-three years on this earth, and it\u2019s only now that I\u2019m beginning to understand and accept that fact. Not because I was trying to deny it, but because for a long time, I wasn\u2019t sure what that even meant to me\u2014someone whose ancestors bled, toiled, and built so much of what we see today, only to have their contributions treated as if it was an honor just to be here, regardless of their circumstance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember being a kid in elementary school, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with my hand over my heart, next to my classmates. All of us just going through the motions. What does a six- or seven-year-old really know about pledging allegiance to a country? I\u2019d say, not much. It was part of the curriculum, like math or spelling, a kind of rote memorization. Stand up, face the flag, say the words. It wasn\u2019t until I got older that I began to grasp the weight of what I was being asked to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time I hit my teens, the idea of pledging my allegiance to anything, let alone a flag, began to feel strange. What did that flag really represent for someone like me? When you\u2019re young, you don\u2019t question the rituals\u2014they\u2019re baked into your day, part of your routine. But when you start to see the bigger picture, when you understand that history is not just stories in a textbook, but a legacy sometimes written in blood, sweat, and tears, you start to think twice. So I wondered: What did I pledge to? Is this really my<\/em> America?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That question, “What did I pledge to?” led me to some introspection. It\u2019s a complicated thing, this idea of being American. What exactly does it mean to be American? For some, it\u2019s as simple as being born here, and participating in the rituals\u2014pledging the flag, singing the national anthem, celebrating the Fourth with fireworks and BBQs. But for others, it\u2019s not so clear-cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, coming to terms with my American identity involves peeling back the layers of a complex, often painful history. My ancestors were not immigrants who chose to come here in search of the American Dream. Which, by the way, to borrow a quote from comedian George Carlin, \u201cIt\u2019s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.\u201d They were brought here in chains and forced to build this nation under insurmountable conditions. My ancestors\u2019 blood runs through the soil of this country, yet for generations, their contributions were minimized, their right to exist as human beings, denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The more I thought about it, the more I realized that being American meant something different for those of us descended from enslaved people. The American story we were told in school was not our<\/em> story. Our narrative didn\u2019t begin with freedom and opportunity\u2014it began with bondage. It\u2019s no wonder I had trouble reconciling my identity as an American. For so long, the country I was asked to pledge allegiance to didn\u2019t even acknowledge my humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not just a personal struggle; this tension between belonging and exclusion has been part of the African American experience since day one. Take Marcus Garvey, for example. Garvey\u2019s “Back to Africa” movement intrigued me. He was a man with vision, determined to uplift Black people around the world by promoting the idea that we should return to our ancestral homeland, to build a life free from the oppression and racism we endured in the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the surface, it certainly sounds noble\u2014reclaiming what was lost and building something new. But as I dug deeper, I realized it wasn\u2019t that simple. While Garvey\u2019s intentions were good, the idea that we should abandon the land our ancestors are buried under didn\u2019t sit well with me. It felt like abandoning everything they were forced to build here and let others reap the spoils. Again, this is not a knock-on Garvey\u2019s intentions, but on an America that was so willing to cast us out after generations of free labor. Fuck that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our ancestors didn\u2019t just suffer in America; they built<\/em> America. From the cotton fields of the South to the railroads stretching across the continent, Black labor laid the foundation for this country\u2019s wealth. To suggest that we should just pack up and leave\u2014essentially wiping the slate clean\u2014felt like an erasure of our legacy. Yes, Africa is our homeland, but America was now our home, forged by the sacrifices of those who came before us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the complexity of Black American identity really comes into play. We live with this duality every day. Where we are both African and American, linked to a history of oppression, but also to one of resilience and triumph. We’ve fought tooth and nail to carve out a space for ourselves in a country that has, at times, refused to recognize our worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Figures like Frederick Douglass, who fought not only for the emancipation of Black people but for the soul of America itself. Douglass believed that the promise of America\u2014the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice\u2014could be realized if we held the country accountable to those very principles. Douglass didn\u2019t give up on the ideals of America, even when it would have been easy for him to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there\u2019s John Brown, a white abolitionist who literally went to war for Black freedom. Brown\u2019s dedication to ending slavery cost him his life. He understood, perhaps better than most whites at the time, that Black people\u2019s fight for freedom was not just a Black struggle\u2014it was an American struggle. People like Douglass and Brown, a black man and a white man, saw the true potential of America, even when it was deeply flawed. They believed in an American future that would be defined by those ideals, not just for the white folks in which they\u2019d always been applied, but for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s this long, tangled history that has shaped my understanding of what it means to be an American. I can\u2019t separate my identity from the legacy of my ancestors. Their sacrifices made it possible for me to be here today, writing these words, contemplating what it means to pledge allegiance to a flag that, for so long, didn\u2019t wave for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But here\u2019s the thing: I am<\/em> an American. I can acknowledge the pain and the suffering that came before me while also taking pride in the strength and resilience of my people. I don\u2019t have to choose between being Black and being American\u2014they are intertwined. My American story is different from the one I was taught in school, but it\u2019s no less valid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, it\u2019s the untold stories, the ones that don\u2019t make it into textbooks, that truly define America. People like Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and countless named and unnamed men and women who fought, argued, and died for a better future, are the real American heroes. It\u2019s in the efforts of those individuals that we are reminded that America is not just a place\u2014it is an ideal, one that we must constantly strive to live up to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So yes, I am an American. Not because I recited a pledge or waved a flag, but because my ancestors helped build this country, and their legacy is woven into the very fabric of what it means to be American. We are here, as we have always been here. That\u2019s a fact I\u2019m finally ready to acknowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am an American. There, I said it. Fifty-three years on this earth, and it\u2019s only now that I\u2019m beginning to understand and accept that fact. Not because I was trying to deny it, but because for a long time, I wasn\u2019t sure what that even meant to me\u2014someone whose ancestors bled, toiled, and built […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writers-block"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Struggle to Define “American”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Marcus Garvey and the “Back to Africa” Movement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Complexity of Black American Identity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Reconciling the Past and the Present<\/h2>\n\n\n\n