There is a Taoist thought, “To understand the limitation of things, desire them.” As you want something, you realize all the things you have to do to obtain it and all the downsides of your desire. Sometimes, you find out your desire was a ‘grass is greener on the other side’ situation. Here in the United States of America, a lot of people had a desire to be special, to be different, to be exceptional. The idea or philosophy of American Exceptionalism is challenging to put into words, but it can be seen in action. Many Americans have this arrogance or expectation of supremacy. Like many things involving tribalistic concepts, if we engage in behavior, it is justified, but if something happens to us, then it is wrong by default.
Another downside of American Exceptionalism is this inability to admit fault. We have citizens in our midst who can do no wrong, and when confronted, will find a way to continue to not be wrong in their minds. The evasion is done through stonewalling, mental gymnastics, projection, and a host of justifications that allow them to continue not to have to modify their behavior. One of the most prolonged, darkest, and most damaging examples of this is racism.
Since the inception of colonies through the present day, racism has played a devastating role in the lives of Americans. Whether we are talking about massacring existing civilizations, treating people as property, or enacting policies explicitly designed to exclude a subset of people, racism has widened the gap between white people and the rest from the start. The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth. The reality now is the attitudes of the American Exceptionalism crowd have shifted from torch-bearing, through uncomfortable, to intolerable.
The nation grieves. People once thought of the USA as a place where god itself placed a magical barrier around its political borders, where all bad things were just divine punishment for not being pious enough. Fortunately, the reigns of reality are being seized, and a bandage hiding scars hundreds of years old is being ripped off. However, admitting a problem is just the first step. We have the people who look at American Exceptionalism and hold up their confederate flags, an ideal built on slavery and racism, with genuine pride to tell others to leave. Those people will pretend to acknowledge the problem and then with a ‘but’ proceed to negate the premise of their original statement.
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu teaches us, “Confront the difficult while it is still easy, accomplish the great task through a series of small acts.” Unfortunately, in this case, such is no longer possible. We can’t save the lives ruined by systemic racism for the lost generations. How do we address the lands and loans parceled out to the select demographic, and what that meant to people who came later, who inherited wealth and opportunity? How do we begin to talk about political policies and prison populations, both designed to hurt? How does The United States of America, a nation who for generations marketed itself as some beacon of morality, standards, and law while simultaneously codifying rippling inequality? This same inequality has forced us into the streets and diminished us to banging on the table in Congress like children afraid of not being exceptional. For many privileged people, equality feels like oppression.
The USA can no longer be the person who had one spectacular play in a high-school football game, made possible through critical blocks from African-American teammates, and sit around bragging about it to everyone for years. It is an old story, it doesn’t highlight everything that happened, and it simply isn’t enough. Those glory days were a long time ago. If the USA wants to be positively exceptional again, it needs to earn it the right way. The USA needs to be a leader and pioneer in global affairs the way kids used to think it did when they looked at the Star-Spangled Banner, and not by gun-barrel diplomacy and staggering hypocrisy.
I don’t have the answers for how to make amends for hundreds of years of abuse and neglect. I don’t even have answers for the hurt I’ve, individually, caused as a part of ‘The War on Terror.’ I can stand up and say what I did was wrong. I knew it then, and it has actively haunted me for years. I am cautiously optimistic the growing choir of voices joining together to rip the bandage of exceptionalism off to get at the heart of the problems of systemic inequality is finally outweighing the ‘but’ crowd. When the right thing is profitable, we are moving in the forward direction, even if that is a cynical thing to say.
Admitting fault is hard for a lot of people to do. Questioning one’s beliefs, perspectives, ideas, etc., can also be a difficult task. The more natural path is to fall back on answers that can’t be challenged, like tradition. We are going to do this because we do this. It is an answer that justifies itself in the eyes of someone looking for an excuse. However, what if the original reason was wrong from the start? Racism is wrong from the beginning, and whether it is justified through religious or cultural traditions, it is wrong now, and the chain needs to be broken.
Lao Tzu writes, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” The USA has rattled sabers, patrolled the deep, and peered down from orbit. Despite all of its force projection, it has yet to come to terms with itself. We are only now throwing monuments of racists into rivers; many erected long after the war to assert dominance.
Lao Tzu also reminds us, “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.” While it is too late for the fallen victims of our tragic past, we can build a better future. We can, through the ‘series of small acts,’ stop causing further damage. Racism is at its worst and most horrifically successful when acted upon -when things are done. As we continue to do what’s right and put the framework in place to ensure nothing can be done, we need to remain vigilant to make sure nothing will be undone as well. We have seen what happens otherwise with the reversal of the Voting Rights Act, for instance. The healing process will take time and be fraught with resistance; the people who believe in American Exceptionalism and is itself a limited idea that applies to a narrow band of people. We are and can be better than who we were.