Confederate Flag Down, Rainbow Flag Up: This Is the American Pride We’ve Been Waiting For
ANGLO AMERICA, 29 Jun 2015
Steven W Thrasher – The Guardian
It may not be hope and change, but isn’t it amazing how much grace there is in Barack Obama’s United States right now?
The Confederate flag was torn from its pole by an activist less than 24 hours after the president sang Amazing Grace. In between: equality. Art: Bob Englehart / Hartford Courant (top left); Southern Poverty Law Center (top right); Shepard Fairey (bottom left); Adam Anderson (bottom middle); Yin Bogu / Corbis (bottom right)
28 Jun 2015 – This Pride Sunday, as the world celebrates rioters at the Stonewall Inn here in New York who fought back against police brutality and helped advance the cause of personal liberty, the citizens of the United States have something to believe in again.
Here we have an America where, yes, a courageous black woman pulled down the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse, at last, and just the morning after the rainbow flag overtook the face of a nation – from Facebook profile photos to the front lawn of the White House.
A black president lives in the White House that's lit up by a rainbow. America. http://t.co/vouFAeV3iX
— @hayesbrown.bsky.social (@HayesBrown) June 27, 2015
At last, we can be proud.
We can now be proud to live in an America with a black president who can finally own the realities of being black. After these 10 days in June, when he starts the week saying aloud that racism is “not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public” and ends it singing Amazing Grace, Barack Obama is on fire.
We can be proud of a black president who can, at last, talk about race as he did way back in 2008, even as inspiringly as the idealist young citizen wrote in the pages of Dreams from My Father some 20 years ago. Sure, the hope and change have been replaced by grace and humility, but here is a man who walked into a black church on Friday – a church filled with the Holy Ghost, with pain after violence – and let his blackness shine beautifully, to affirm the sanctity that black lives matter.
Sure, these are symbols. But the powerless have challenged the powerful to be great again this June, and for that, we should all be proud.
We should be proud to live in a nation where the highest tribunal ruled twice – twice in a week! – in ways that that will aid the health and prosperity of people who are poor or queer or both, which is too often the case. By upholding key provisions of the Affordable Care Act and the Fair Housing Act, the US supreme court affirmed that millions will prosper. (Oh, and there was some other good news about gay and lesbian marriages or something this week, too.)
Here is what progressivism looks like in Barack Obama’s America circa 2015, whether it’s too late or not: even after these 10 days in June, we are not satisfied.
As enamored as we may rightfully feel about him right now, the president is not our friend – he is our elected leader. Obama has a year and a half to go, and in that eulogy for South Carolina pastor Clementa Pinckney (a fighter for black and LGBT civil rights himself), the president talked about the very things on which activists from Black Lives Matter and beyond have been pushing him so hard: racial bias in policing, racial bias in prison, racial bias in the voting booth, racial bias in school, racial bias at work. These things apply not just to race, but to gender, to sex, to the most basic things about ourselves.
We can be proud of our president, but we should be prouder still of Jennicet Gutiérrez, the immigrant transgender woman who understood that no hors d’oeuvre is worth your silence in the face of suffering – even when served by a president who would bathe our (not his) White House in rainbow lights just a few days after she interrupted him, bravely.
We should be proud of Chelsea Manning, the imprisoned transgender whistleblower who after sacrificing years of her life for speaking up against military violence, continues to dissent from behind bars.
We should be proud of Bree Newsome, the brave black woman who just got out from behind them for tearing down that damned flag.
#Hero #WarriorQueen #FreeBree pic.twitter.com/3qSHOijqVc
— Rebecca Cohen (@GynoStar) June 28, 2015
We can be proud to live in a country where queer black citizens have been at – are still at – the forefront of the fights for racial, sexual, political and economic freedom, from Bayard Rustin in the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition in the 1950s, to Marsha P Johnson at Stonewall in 1969, to Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi and Alicia Garza and DeRay Mckesson – the kinds of civil-rights leaders America has been waiting for since Martin Luther King Jr – and the many LGBT voices in the Black Lives Matter movement right now, today.
The American people can be proud to be in the midst a revolution. Our concept of gender is on the defensive, as is our prison industrial complex. The terms “structural racism” and “white supremacy”, usually banished from American discourse, are being spoken about everywhere, across the world. The redistribution of wealth to the rich by those who can’t afford health insurance is beyond stymied, but government subsidies for healthcare were saved. The mythology that race is anything more than a social construct has been exposed. For the first time ever, we have a collective understanding of how many people are actually killed by police, and every aspect of state authority is under examination – drones and troops, love and life, from right and left.
The most powerful form of patriotism is dissent, whether it’s standing up to the po-po or the president of the United States. We made these 10 days in June, and we should shout our pride to the rooftops.
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MORE:
Ten days that turned America into a better place – Michael Cohen
‘We did it, babe!’ – love won the day on the same-sex marriage decision – Steven W Thrasher
Same-sex marriage isn’t equality for all LGBT people. Our movement can’t end – Chelsea E Manning
Steven W Thrasher is writer-at-large for Guardian US. He was named Journalist of the Year 2012 by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, the Advocate and more.
Go to Original – theguardian.com
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