The Only Best American

I was on the bus the other day and a Black man was insulting a Black woman, she was giving it to him just as good if not better; he was getting that rotten look, you know, the one that says, You've Got Me Pegged and I Hate You For It. In any case, he got so mad that he soon began a rant against Americans and right then it occurred to me that he wasn't American, he had a thick West Indian accent, what made me miss it? I don't know. He began to go after his "opponent" with some pretty furious stereotypes 'welfare queen, junkie, baby-mama, etc' and soon it was clear that his rant was not directed to the woman with whom he was speaking, at least not exclusively. He was livid, hurt and I believe had we not all been staring at him, a tear would have fallen. He seemed to have taken all his frustration over an unfulfilled America and poured it toward this woman, I never found out the cause of their tiff, but I've seen this man's hurt before. I have heard many of my relatives express the same sentiments; they seem offended by Americans they believe are throwing away their "blessings," Black Americans, and they use this to explain their own lack of upward mobility. Why is this their gut reaction? Why is the failure of America, to the man on the bus, and to most my uncles, to be blamed on the only people in the country who looked just like them?

Another Black man on the bus soon interrupted the fight in a tone I assumed chivalrous but soon discovered was a certain hurt patriotic pride. He retorted with 'if it's so good where you came from, why don't you go back there?' I was strangely hurt, of course he wasn't speaking to me, and might have meant only to hurt the West Indian man, but it was disheartening to see how close to the surface his xenophobia was. I am reading now a book called "Real Black," by John L. Jackson Jr., a field-study on racial sincerity with a quote from an older Black male Harlemite which I believe illuminates this topic further, he states: "just because somebody's got dark skin, doesn't mean they deserve to be here...people fought for this community...people come here and buy cars and homes, and live the lifestyle we say we want...they take our destiny." The entire plot of "Real Black" pivots on the question of racial sincerity vs. authenticity, the latter of course being at the very center of this Black on Black divide - authenticity of Americanism, who is more American. America being never of course the place, but the dream.

All this to say that my greatest fear is nationism - not nationalism, that at least embraces a history and includes other people in its big picture. I define nationism as the single-mindedness that both sides of the above debate have in common, albeit unknown to them. Nationism is wanting to be the only best American, nationism is wanting to have, for yourself, all the ideals that the history of red, white and blue has promised (implicitly and otherwise) - nationism is distracting, not to mention an absolute waste of time. If the realization of my dream or "destiny" creates your nightmare, we are both trapped in nothingness, the moral of the tale being? When you dream (even when you dream the American dream), do dream your neighbors in it too, be they black, white, native, foreign, purple, green, Australian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Latino...well, you get the point.