Andre Santana
Dear America:
Ever since the whole sitting during the National Anthem controversy started a couple weeks ago with Colin Kaepernick, I have seen plenty of people attack the protest saying it is essentially an attack on the military. I myself served in an Afghanistan in 2012, and I’m at least a 4th Generation military service member. My family has a long history of serving this country, and I would bet that behind almost every major war this country has had, I could find a relative that fought or died in it. The major difference between my military history and others, is that members of my family weren’t one color. They were men and women - white, black, yellow, and brown, because I come from a very diverse background. So I have a very unique perspective on the matter. If you have a strong opinion on this, I would like for you to be open to hear from a veteran of mixed race, and if anyone has room to be offended it should be me.
Ever since the whole sitting during the National Anthem controversy started a couple weeks ago with Colin Kaepernick, I have seen plenty of people attack the protest saying it is essentially an attack on the military. I myself served in an Afghanistan in 2012, and I’m at least a 4th Generation military service member. My family has a long history of serving this country, and I would bet that behind almost every major war this country has had, I could find a relative that fought or died in it. The major difference between my military history and others, is that members of my family weren’t one color. They were men and women - white, black, yellow, and brown, because I come from a very diverse background. So I have a very unique perspective on the matter. If you have a strong opinion on this, I would like for you to be open to hear from a veteran of mixed race, and if anyone has room to be offended it should be me.
Many people against Kaepernick sitting or bending his knee during the Flag and national Anthem have said the Flag stands for freedom, but this is only partially true. My grandfather and his brother fought in Vietnam and Korea and are black. When they came home from fighting for some say “our freedoms”, did they get the same freedoms as their white service members? No, they couldn’t drink from the same water fountain, share the same pools, and couldn’t use their VA home loan to purchase homes in neighborhoods of their choosing because of discriminatory housing practices. The real truth is they fought to defend American Supremacy but, they hoped that after they fought for their country, America would recognize their sacrifice and America would change. America eventually did change but, it wasn’t because of the sacrifice of my relatives in war. It was because of protesters during the Civil Rights Movement like Kaepernick. Jackie Robinson, another WWII vet that was black, is quoted as saying he protested the national Anthem by sitting because of the freedoms he and other blacks never received - another failed dream and failed promise our country has yet to deliver on. My grandfather ended up being fed-up with all the racism in America and asked to be stationed in the Philippines and in Germany, anywhere except the US, because in those countries they treated him better. You find on military bases abroad that American service members are more unified because they are all foreigners in another country, and there is less racism as a result. This isn’t to say everything was great abroad. My grandfather ended up retiring from the Air Force after two decades as an E-5, because getting promoted higher than that as a Black Airmen in the 60's rarely happened.
If the Flag and Anthem does represent freedom, it only represented the freedoms of white men, because they were the only ones to receive it after the wars. To say that it came from soldiers fighting has no correlation to the truth of what really brought those freedoms to everyone. The Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, women’s suffrage, and the desegregation of schools was a victory of the Civil Rights Movement, not the military. By perverting and perpetuating this myth, you are attempting to whitewash the importance of the Civil Rights Movement. My other grandfather, who was also considered black and served in the military just like his brothers, got involved in the Civil Rights Movement. After being discriminated against while serving in the Army he took an Honorable Discharge and got out. He went out to march in protest, and he fought for the unions to ensure Longshoremen got benefits for every member regardless of race or gender as a civilian. By giving credit to those advances in freedom to the military, you are insulting my grandfather and every other member of the Civil Rights Movement.
I have been around the world, and I have learned that every country is guilty of sugar coating its past. In the UK, they sugarcoat their colonial history, Germans schools barely mention the Holocaust, and Japanese schools don’t speak about their atrocities against the Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos in WWII. America is no different. We sugarcoat the genocide of Native Americans and the meaning of the Flag and the Anthem to create an ideal narrative but, in doing that we are guilty of not bettering the American experience, which should be our goal. The only way we can progress in our struggle for equality is to be honest and truthful about our history, and where we are as a Nation. We have struggled with racism for far too long, because some people seem to just want to ignore the problem. If you think we have fallen short on the American principles of freedom life, liberty, and justice for all, than one way to do that is by holding the American Anthem and Flag accountable. This is a peaceful nonviolent way of making a statement that the American promise has fallen short, and the fact it makes you uncomfortable is the point. For those of you that are so offended by it, I ask you are you offended because not everyone shares the same American perspective as you or, are you offended because this protest violates your preconception of America, that you have been force-fed through a sugar coated American education system?
This protest should make you uncomfortable and should remind you to want to fix our problems every time you see it. It should make you think, what can I do to help? What can I do to ensure the American freedoms espoused in the Declaration of Independence are carried on? A good place to start is to support criminal justice reform, ending the war on drugs, and stop mass incarceration that has disproportionately affected blacks, and has not worked to stop drug use. This had led to the over policing of black communities which causes a lot of these negative police interactions because blacks are tired of constantly being harassed by cops for minor crimes. The war on drugs is racist, and causes a cycle of blacks not being able to get jobs because of felony record convictions which also takes away their right to vote. It has also destroyed the black family, as many black fathers are in jail for disproportionately longer sentences than whites and in higher numbers than whites, so we have at least two generations of black kids raised fatherless; which is why you see many youths with the wrong direction in life. I suggest before you judge another protest, you read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
I will end with this - the American Flag and Anthem is a symbol. To many Blacks and Native Americans it can symbolize genocide, slavery, and oppression and they are not exactly wrong. If you are forcing your narrative of freedom of the Flag and Anthem on someone who has a legitimate claim against it, you are guilty of being part of the problem. You are guilty of holding America back from living up to its potential and continue to perpetuate the lack of accountability that is necessary to fix our endemic problems of racism. I hope that every service member that did believe they fought for our freedoms, will start fighting for those freedoms at home like my grandfather did when he got involved in civil rights after serving in the Army. I hope they understand while the Flag may represent freedoms for some people, it can represent other things to different people and your way isn’t necessarily the only way to think about it. The fight for equality at home can possibly be much harder than the one we soldiers fought abroad, because you risk losing friends when you hold them accountable for continuing to hold us back but, that only makes the triumph all the more powerful.
Below is my qualifications to render my opinion. These are some of the members of my family that served in the military. Rn Bdh #veteransforkaepernick #shaunking#BernieSanders
#MichelleAlexander
#MichelleAlexander
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