The NPR Politics Podcast - How Black Americans Experience Patriotism

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

The U.S. is experiencing a reckoning over the fact that the promises of America are not fulfilled equally. Black Americans share how they experience patriotism ahead of the July Fourth celebration. This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and political reporter Juana Summers.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist, The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And today, many of us here in the U.S. are off work for the Fourth of July. And Juana, you have spent the last few weeks talking to Black people across the country about how they reconcile their experiences of racism with feelings of patriotism and pride and promise that this day, this 4th of July, is supposed to invoke in people. So I guess before we even dive into any of the reporting you have,

I was just curious if you could talk to us a little bit about why you decided to go out and find and report these stories. Yeah. So I think for me, there are a couple different reasons. The first is that we are in a moment that is unique for Black Americans. We are, of course, all grappling with the effects of the COVID pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities in this country. But we're also seeing an economic downturn that is impacting Black folks, as well as what many folks have called a pandemic within a pandemic, which is, of course, this history of systemic racism and discrimination that has seen people from all walks of life take to the streets in these cities across the country, and frankly, demand better.

And there's polling that I had seen over recent weeks that suggested that Black people in this moment are historically less patriotic today than they have been in the past. And I think the other big reason why I was curious about this is because as a Black woman, I know these are conversations that we have often in our community about how to reconcile these experiences that we have personally with pride in this place that we live, but that I often think only happen among our community and that often aren't heard. And I thought that these are the voices that we needed to hear from in this moment. So Juana, tell us more about what you found.

Yeah. So when we started these conversations, it was our goal to talk to as many people as we could from different backgrounds across the country. And one of the conversations that stuck with me the most was a conversation I had earlier this week with Armin Bragg, who is a 75-year-old man in Birmingham, Alabama. He was active in the civil rights movement there, talked about being involved in those events outside the historic 16th Street Baptist Church. And he told me that for him, the day to celebrate was Juneteenth. He didn't see a lot of reason to celebrate on the 4th of July itself. You know, there's not a better song to listen to than the National Anthem. It can at times give you goosebumps. But knowing what's happening in the

country, we don't have these patriotic desires as we used to have. Yeah, and one of the things that was so interesting about talking to him is that this is someone who was on the ground for some of the most pivotal civil he thought of patriotism. The thing that he brought up to me was Colin Kaepernick, the NFL player, taking a knee visibly in protest, something where he said, he pointed out, Colin Kaepernick put his career on the line to show that this injustice needs to end. And he said he believes in doing what Colin Kaepernick did and take kneeling on one knee to protest what's going on in this country. It sounds like Donald Trump's view, and likely many other Americans' view of patriotism, is that idea of there is a hard and fast idea of respect, and that respect means doing X. And it sounds like Armin Bragg's view of patriotism and other people in this story, it's more about questioning. It's not necessarily about obedience or taking action X, Y, or Z.

Is that the sense you got? Yeah, that's exactly right. I had a really interesting conversation with Farrah Jasmine Griffin, who is a professor at Columbia University. And I'm paraphrasing her here, but she makes the point that patriotism for Black folks, it's not uncritical. It's not naive. It inherently involves that questioning that you're talking about, Danielle. It involves pushing the country

to be better. It's a verb. It's active. It's not passive for Black people in this country. And that's something that I think came out in every conversation I had. And Juana, did the people that you speak with, you know, readily identify as being patriotic? Like, would they use that word for how they feel about themselves? Yeah, you know, some of them did. I talked with a man named Timothy Berry. He went to the military academy at West Point. He was actually one of West Point's only Black class presidents back in 2013.

And I asked him why he went there. And he told me that West Point was the type of place that built leaders. He said he went there because of patriotism. I have always had a profound appreciation for what this country has said its ideals are. But being a Black American, being one like particularly one that served in uniform, I quickly realized that there was just a lot of contradictions in that. And I felt that it was not just like an obligation to me to serve in the capacity I could, but also just to hold the country accountable for some of the shortcomings. Another person I talked to was Brandon Hampton. He lives in Atlanta.

He talked to me about biking past the place where Richard Brooks died and what that felt like. And when I asked him about how he thinks of patriotism, he talked about it in a sense almost the way you talk about a family member that you love when you love something you demand better from it that's good parenting you know if you love your child you don't look at everything your child does and say oh that's great at some point you are going to have to teach them a lesson or instill a value in them that they haven't been expressing that you think that they should have as an adult you have to correct that behavior and i think if you love the country adult. You have to correct that behavior. And I think if you love the country, you find a way to correct the behavior.

I think it's also important to point out that we talked to some people who didn't feel that attachment, who wouldn't describe themselves necessarily as patriotic. I think about a particular couple of conversations I had with folks who say that because progress in this country has been halting and uneven and in some ways left Black Americans behind, it's hard to feel that attachment, like there's a flag that represents you, like there's a country for you where you belong. Yeah, and I, in advance of talking with you about this, Juana, I did go try to find some polling on this. Now, this is polling from almost exactly a year ago, July of 2019. So of course, we're in a somewhat different place right now, but it at least shows us a sort of baseline on this. It's a poll from The Economist and YouGov. And what it shows is that you don't

have huge differences between Black Americans and Americans of other races on patriotism, and that there's a range of views among Black Americans. A plurality, four in 10, said they're somewhat patriotic. And then two in 10 said very patriotic, and about four in 10 said not very or not at all. So there's no clear one group that pops out as generalizable. I think the one difference between races that you can see here really is that white Americans are more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to say they are very patriotic. I was just going to ask you that, Danielle, because I will say, you know, growing up in a Muslim home and an Asian home, I do think that some of the conversations, that you're describing, they're not the same,

but they felt somewhat familiar because these are conversations I think many, you know, children or grandchildren, great-grandchildren of immigrants have, particularly if they are not white immigrants, because there has felt like this ownership of patriotism at times that is racialized, whether or not that's maybe an accurate description of it. I mean, I know I can add at least from this poll that leaving aside race, the oldest Americans are much more likely than the youngest Americans to say they are very patriotic. People who are 65 and older, six in 10 of them say they're very patriotic. One other thing to add here, though, is that patriotism is also heavily a partisan thing. Republicans said they are much more likely to consider themselves very patriotic than Democrats. So it appears to be even more of a partisan divide than a racial divide than anything else divide except maybe age.

All right. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll have a lot more to talk about when we get back. Support for NPR and the following message come from DuckDuckGo. Do you want the same Internet but more privacy? and we'll have a lot more to talk about when we get back. avoiding trackers, duck, duck, go, privacy simplified. Support also comes from SimpliSafe Home Security. SimpliSafe believes that simple is safer, which is why they designed their system to be easy to install. Order online with the click of a button. Open the box, place the sensors, plug it in, and your home is protected around the clock. Get free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee

at simplisafe.com slash NPR politics. I'm Gregory Warner with NPR's Rough Translation. So there's a holiday in the Netherlands where every year thousands of white folks wear blackface. Some people are trying to end that tradition, but in a very Dutch way. You talk, you talk, you talk, you talk, you talk until you reach consensus.

Can you fight racism in a way that brings. You talk, you talk, you talk, you talk, you talk until you reach consensus. Can you fight racism in a way that brings the whole country with you? That's on NPR's Rough Translation. And we're back. And Wana, did you get the sense that this 4th of July is particularly ripe for the kind of reflections that you heard in your reporting?

Is something different about this year? There's a lot different about this year. And I think that's perhaps adding to why people are thinking about their feelings about this country so critically is because we, not to tie everything to the coronavirus, but by and large, we are all at home, we're inside, we're not traveling. Some of the traditional ways in which many people choose to celebrate this holiday simply can't exist because of public health reasons. And I think, at least for me going to the personal, that's made me sit down and think about a lot of things differently. We are in such a unique

moment in time where this country is being asked to reckon with the fact that the promise that it was built on and the great experiment of America has fallen short and systemically fall short for a lot of people, Black people chief among them. And I think a lot of people are going to be thinking about that over this weekend. One question I also had after hearing your story is, how much do the people that you talk to talk about patriotism in connection with particular actions or how to participate in America, whether it's the military or voting or protest? What sort of insights did you get about that? The protest piece was really interesting. I met a young couple in Richmond, Virginia, Maya Rogers and Vincent Gibson.

And one of them, Maya, told me she'd never protested before the current uprising that we find ourselves in. And both of them echoed something that a lot of people told me, that protesting in the streets this year is the most patriotic that they've ever felt in their lives, because they feel like patriotism, like I said earlier, it's active. They're demonstrating that they care. They're physically using their bodies and their voices to hold this country to account where they see shortcomings. And a lot of people have said that in this moment, they're finding their voices, perhaps even for the first time, and they feel power in that, and they feel a responsibility to wield that power. You know, Juana, we've reported on race

and culture and how it intersects with politics for a while now. And do you feel like you've seen an evolution in recent years and how Black Americans view this country? Yeah, you know, I think it's been really clear in some of the conversations I've had, and I'm sure you guys can both relate to this too, just how generational some of these divides are and how people view these countries. But then again, I come back to Armin Bragg, who is 75, and his patriotism is exemplified by a 20-something like Colin Kaepernick. are and how people view these countries. But then again, I come back to Armin Bragg, who is 75, and his patriotism is exemplified by a 20-something like Colin Kaepernick. I find that so striking in that people are grappling with this yet again, because the seismic shift that we're seeing in our politics and our culture demands new reflection. And I know even within conversations

I've had with my own family, with my parents and my grandparents, they're looking at it differently than they did and talking about it differently than they did in conversations we even had when I remember having them when we were talking about when Barack Obama was campaigning and elected. It's just different. Speaking of Armand Bragg and anyone else you spoke to who might have been active during the civil rights era. Did they talk about how the current era of protests compares to then? So it's so interesting. One thing that came up among older folks, if I'm just generally speaking here, is the fact that they have hope because they see how many young people are holding this country to account every day. Some of them said that they felt like not a lot maybe had changed since the 60s, but they feel like, by and large, if anything's going to change, it's because young people are coming into power, they are standing in the street,

they are protesting, they're voting, they are being elected to offices up and down the ballot. And a lot of them said that this new generation is inspirational, that it reminded them of themselves in the 60s. So, Juana, one man who came up in your reporting was not somebody who you interviewed, but it was someone who wrestled with the promise of America and what patriotism meant, you know, more than 100 years ago. And that was Frederick Douglass. Yeah, he came up a bunch, but most memorably for me in a conversation that I had with the Reverend France Whitfield, who is a pastor in Waterloo, Iowa, which is a very black town in a very white state. And he told me when I asked him about how he planned on celebrating July 4th,

he said he didn't really see much of a point to that. He doesn't take much pride in that day. But instead, he would think about July 5th in 1852, when Frederick Douglass gave the speech that you're referencing. And Juana, we have an excerpt of that speech that you were referring to. It's read here by the actor James Earl Jones. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me.

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. And that was originally broadcast on Democracy Now. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.