A Pledge to Hiprocrisy

The Pledge of Allegiance or a Pledge to Hypocrisy?
Volume 1, Hypocrisy at Home

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

We all love our country, I am sure. We are constantly told and shown how life in the United States is so much better than so many other countries. We must recognize, however that our life in the United States is only as good as it is because life in other countries is not as good. And furthermore, life for some in the United States is good because others in the United States live a poor life. We’ll focus on a few examples here in the United States, for now.

Liberty and Justice for All? A Brief and Messy History Lesson

Let us remember that this country is bathed in blood. The pledge of allegiance was written in 1842 to celebrate the 400 year anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of America. Of course, there was a problem for Columbus: the continent he had stumbled upon was already inhabited by millions of Native Americans. Solution: convince everybody that Native Americans were practically animals, incapable of becoming civilized and kill them. Effect on Today: How many Native American friends do you have? And how free are the dead? Perhaps when we sing “liberty,” we mean liberty from life rather than of life.

Then there was the problem of making money from the land. Solution: slavery, the only humane answer to treating “human-like creatures” known as Native Americans and Africans. The first slaves in the Americas were Native American; however they had the bad habit of dying due to European diseases and environmental stress. “Luckily” the Africans had already been inoculated against the Europeans and, because of the climate of their land, could withstand the environment better. Still, many died from the back braking labor, the hot sun, and from malnutrition. Eventually slavery ended but its effects continue to this day. After slavery the United States of America was still a very hostile place for Black Americans. Racism persisted causing unequal treatment in education, housing, and employment, not to mention DEATH. But slavery is over and the civil rights movement ended racism, right?

History books, teachers, and the television make life seem so simple. Unfortunately, life is much more complex than that. Aside from obvious overt racism (like burning down black churches, police officer beatings, etc), there is covert racism, or institutional racism; the fact that Black Americans were treated unfairly in the past ripples through time to the present. They were treated unfairly in the past, they went to segregated and unequal schools, lived in segregated and unequal neighborhoods, and worked in poor jobs. What kind of children are they going to have? Poor black children. These poor black children end up going to the same poor segregated schools in the same poor segregated neighborhoods and get the same poor dead-end jobs. They have poor children and the cycle continues. This is social reproduction.

Then schools are desegregated and the problem should be resolved right? Unfortunately, schools serve their neighborhoods, but remember neighborhoods and cities, like South Gate, are segregated. So the schools end up being segregated as well. That shouldn’t be a problem though if the schools are equally good and getting the same amount of funding, right? Wrong again.

In poor income (usually segregated) schools, the teachers tend to be different than the students, either in race or in socio-economic status. These teachers went to schools were they were taught how to teach the “general American student.” Who is this general student? A White, English speaking, middle class child. We are all individuals with our own needs, yet we go to school and receive a mass produced education tailored to a specific group. As poor minorities, our needs are different, and they start with a need for increased funding.

Middle class parents tend to treat their children the way teachers treat their students. This means that middle class children are being prepared for school as soon as they squeeze out of the womb. Poor minority students need to start school at an earlier age to catch up with their middle class peers. High quality day cares and preschools are needed but they cost money, money the government should front if they really do believe in justice. After all, it is their fault that poor minorities end up behind middle class students. This increased funding would have to continue on through out school because middle class children don’t suddenly stop being middle class when they enter school. They continue to reap the benefits all throughout their education.

Another good step in the right direction would be to train teachers to listen to their students and accommodate their needs. This will be discussed later though.

This issue does not simply apply to Black American students. Looking around South Gate, it is easy to see that we have become a segregated city with segregated schools. South Gate is also a working class community, coincidence? There are no coincidences in life; South Gate is segregated for historical reasons, though not exactly the same as stated above. Again, this is a topic for another day.

So how does all of this benefit some?

Looking back at the slaughtering of Native Americans, we have to remember that the ones that benefited were the white Europeans. They came and took the best land for themselves and established themselves in, what is now, the United States. What kind of kids did they have? Rich white kids and the cycle continued. Native Americans had to die so that these people could get their land and hold it for themselves.

But of course land is nothing unless you can cultivate it. White Europeans enslaved entire peoples so that they, the relatively small amount of them, could reap all of the benefits of the land. The slave owners had kids, and the kids became slave owners or other entrepreneurs and they had kids and you know the cycle continued from there. But of course slavery ended so this should have hurt the slave owners, right? It did hurt them, but only very mildly. Instead of having slaves working for them practically for free, they had free black and poor white people working for them for almost free. The former slave owners still had the land and all the years of experience owning a business. The former slaves and poor white people didn’t have the best land if any and so they had to work for the former slave owners. So the ending of slavery only hurt the slave owner’s profit margins, but it didn’t suddenly level the playing field.

Of course in the north slavery had ended for some time and they didn’t really concentrate on land use. But the same idea applies: social reproduction; the rich white people who owned business and factories owned them because they had benefited from the injustices the Native Americans suffered through.

The effects continue to the present because of social reproduction theory. Perhaps we should change the constitution to read “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if you were lucky enough to have been born into a rich, likely white, family.”

To conclude, how can we recite the pledge of allegiance, knowing that so many had their liberty taken away? Knowing that so many suffered and continue to suffer injustices? You want some more examples? Google the following: