On Sunday morning, Trump told four congresswomen of color (known as ‘The Squad’) to go back to their countries, which, according to his view, are “crime infested” and run by the most corrupt governments in the world. There is, of course, nothing in this attack that’s new. It is a racist position that has its root in one of the justifications for slavery—namely, that the African societies blacks came from were, at the end of the day, much worse than the country that exploited their labor with no mercy. Slavery was not a curse but a blessing for unfortunate negroes.
After the emancipation in 1863, this reasoning quickly mutated into: If you don’t like America, then go back to savage Africa. Trump was saying exactly this to the four congresswomen, three of whom were born in the US, two of whom are (if generational duration be our measure) more American than the president himself, one of whom is a second-generation American (only one generation below Trump), and one is, like the First Lady, a naturalized US citizen.
Now, the first point I want to make is that people do not leave their home countries because they’re seeking a new adventure. Leaving the place of one’s birth is never an easy thing to do. It’s rarely a matter of inspiration. It’s almost always an act of desperation. Things are so bad in your beloved country that you’re willing to reboot your whole life in an unknown place. One only has to look at the Irish immigrants of the 19th century to appreciate this point. These Europeans did not leave a paradise, but a “shithole” made by the British Empire. Jews, Italians, and what have you were escaping one shithole or another. That pattern is a major part of US history.
But once settled in a new country, isn’t it wrong for an immigrant to “hate” it? This is Trump’s present move to defend his seventh-day rant. He claims the four congresswomen of color, who came from lord knows where, hate the US. Now, isn’t there some substance to this Trumpian way thinking? How ungrateful these immigrants are. How dare they come all the way over here and begin hating on everything. Let’s think about this for a moment.
You made the point! Then why does the Squad Hate America?
— james hanna (@jamesha68080317) July 15, 2019
The problem with this apparently common sense reasoning is the definition of hating a (or this) country is not universal. It’s implied that it is. That all feel this way. Hating the US only means this and this and that. But the this, this, and that are, in actuality, issued not from The All but a particular point (or species) of American feeling. One group is determining what it means to hate a country. And this group has, as far as I can tell, not asked one of the four congresswomen of color in question if they do really hate the US in the way expressed by Trump and his party, the GOP. These women are being told that they do, no matter what. They are also called communists, which is another way of saying: you want to destroy “the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth.”
First, you have to be nuts to think that the US is a perfect country. It’s just not. Instead, it’s a country with lots of room for improvement. The case for the US’s obvious greatness is far from settled. But, you may insist, if one is not happy with this enterprise as it is (with all of its problems), why don’t you just pack your things and go back to where you came from (which, in my case, is Zimbabwe)? Here is my one answer to that position.
In terms of population, the US is the most multicultural nation in the world. No large country in Europe or Asia or Africa even comes close. In this respect, the US is still a leader in cross-cultural innovation. To give my point one of many examples, let me describe a recent stay I had in Hamtramck, a city within Detroit whose council became, in 2015, “the first majority Muslim city council in the US.” The house I stayed in (Jar House), which is run by the Hamtramck art organization, Power House Productions, which collaborates with the Zimbabwe Cultural Centre of Detroit, also based in Hamtramck, was on a street, Klinger Street, dominated by Bangladeshi Americans. The city also has Yemeni Americans, and pockets of Polish Americans.
On Caniff Street, Al-Haramine International Foods is directly across from Bozek Markets. Iraqi Chaldeans also live here with Bosnians. And at the most beautiful moment of the day, dawn (the darkling blue sky, the dying stars), rising over the street, the houses, the whole neighborhood, I would hear the Muslim call to prayer. This was the morning music of a culture or religion that’s mostly foreign to me. If I’m anything, I’m a black African Methodist (that is indeed the source of my first name, Charles Wesley, the church’s hymn-man—a bloke who wrote over 6,500 songs to his one and only.) But here was this ancient prayer. And there was the crowing of a rooster. The love songs of small birds. The slow-rising of the sun. This intense infusion of humanity. This one of so many all-American cities.
I could never experience this in Zimbabwe. And I also could never feel the transformative possibilities that buzz all about this work-in-progress we call the US. I can not speak for the Squad, but if this intense feeling of the country’s unique multi-cultural position and rich cultural potential is what you describe as hating the US, then, your application of that word can only have meaning to you. How you hate as an American is not how I hate as an American.
