As Black Americans, it has been difficult through the years to feel a real connection to a country whose people, in some places, still feel the innate need to treat a person of a different race as a second class person. Although Dr. King and at the latter part of his life, Malcolm X, tried to help white people understand and recognize the fact that we are ALL equal, regardless of skin color, and deserve all the rights and privileges allowed to whites in this country, even in 2008, this still hasn’t happened on a large, recognizable scale.

So I wonder then, about those Black people who decided (and still decide) to serve their country, proudly demonstrating their connection to their country (for what deeper connection could you have with a nation when you enlist voluntarily to kill for it?), but still are treated as less than? What could that possible do to the psyche?

Cases in point:

Crispus Attucks – The first causality of the American Revolution. We used to have a day off in our NJ School district, but that was phased out some time ago. Still, although a slave, he honored as “the first to defy, the first to die” and a true martyr of the American Revolution. Why did he feel he had to fight against British soldiers FOR the Americans, even though the Americans considered him “chattel”? Whatever the answer, he did what he felt driven to do, and was killed for it.

Tuskegee Airmen – I imagine these Black men as sharp, intelligent and dashing – of course, what else could airplane fighter pilots be? Way before Top Gun, these Black men overcame unimaginable odds to become America’s first Black airmen. They risked their lives for a country that assumed they lacked the skill and the intelligence to even become pilots. Not only did they have to fight against the enemy, but they also had to fight racism and bigotry on their own native soil. (Interestingly enough, many white flight units were undermanned, but could not use any of these brave pilots because of the military’s segregation policy. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!)

Dorie Miller: and added information here : During the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Seaman Dorie Miller ran up on deck, dragged an officer to safety and used the ship’s machine gun to shoot down several Japanese fighter bombers. He was awarded the Navy Cross, but none of the other medals to which he was entitled. Nevertheless, he went on to serve on other ships until his presumed death at sea in 1944 on the Liscombe Bay.

My father was in the Air Force back in the fifties. As the story goes (and I’ve heard it about a dozen times, but keep telling it, Dad!) he was in Texas for a layover. So, like any other traveler, he decided to pass the time in the bus waiting room. He walks in, sits down, in his full Air Force uniform, to wait for the next bus. You know the feeling you get when you are being watched? Well, that’s what my dad felt – the white folks in the waiting room were certainly giving this black man the “eye”. So the well-mannered (not) security guard walks over and says to my dad, “Look here, boy, don’t you know where the colored waiting room is at?” and points to a windowless, airless room off the side.
Well, let’s just say my dad decided NOT to wait in the bus station that day, choosing instead to walk with a fellow military friend in search of the Officers’ Club. And after telling the story, he always says how angry he was that he got his spit-shined shoes dusty after walking down those country roads.

The point of all this, is simply to say that here we are in the midst of a presidential race with the first Black presidential candidate to be backed by a major political party, but racism still exists. I am nearly 40 years old, born a year after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and though there has been change, I don’t believe there’s been enough change. Not when I can be asked my first year of college – “So, didja get in through the affirmative action clause?” by a so-called classmate (who incidentally was from Texas too….what do they have in the water down there?)

I, as a Black woman, certainly recognize that if I had to choose a country in which to live, I wouldn’t choose any other than America, land of the free, home of the brave. But, for these examples that I’ve cited, there’s been hundreds upon thousands of incidents, small ones perhaps, but even those that stoke the fire of anger that many of us, as “the darker brother” carry inside.

Will America ever truly be color blind, or will we continue to judge and be judged by the color of our skin? And what of those that served, and continue to serve, yet are still judged as still not “good enough?”

Black men serve their country every day, yet are still not welcome nor treated fairly in the very country that they serve. Can you even wonder that many Blacks are angry inside, that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far, and still deemed “not good enough?”

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes