Dear Bruce

 

A still from Jeep's 2021 Super Bowl advert shows the tiny US town of Lebanon, Kansas. Jeep

Dear Bruce Springsteen:

I applaud your efforts to encourage a group of football-loving Americans to become, presumably once again, the ReUnited States of America.

It is true we need healing – deep, honest healing from the seemingly insurmountable chasm(s) that divide us.

But Bruce, oh Bruce – to become the ReUnited States implies that we at some time were the United States in the first place. And I suppose there have been moments when we have been…

Like in the days and weeks following 9/11, when we seemed to “unite” as good American patriots around our fear of foreign terrorists… right up until we “united” around our hatred and xenophobia toward our Muslim siblings (regardless of their national identity).

Or maybe we were “united” under our color-blindness of the Post Civil Rights era, where we celebrated the victory of the full inclusion of our African American siblings into the “civil” structures of this nation… as we (White America) watched their neighborhoods crumble under the Reagan regime of “trickle-down economics” (that have yet to trickle down), and the “War on Drugs” that was really just a war on Black America.

Oh, and there were some “United Farm Workers” during that Civil Rights Era too…but I’m not so sure the States were “united” behind them either – then, now, or anytime in our history.

But wait! We seem to have united around our love of the LGBTQ+ community. They can get married (just not in our churches), and (depending on which store they choose), they can even buy a cake to celebrate!...we just don’t want them using public restrooms, or having job security, or being able to adopt children too easily.

And I suppose we “united” during WWII, as we drank the propaganda that we were the good guys – and in some ways we were...except for the ways we interned our own citizens of Asian identities in our US version of concentration camps, or refused our Jewish neighbors sanctuary from genocide.

Perhaps we were “united” for a brief and beautiful time of Reconstruction after the Civil War…right up until states like Texas and Florida started (almost immediately) implementing Jim Crow laws…and Texas failed to tell its enslaved people they had been emancipated two years earlier anyway, so maybe Texas missed out on the “united” party altogether that time around.

And I’m sure if we asked any Indigenous peoples of these lands – where that little chapel with the Christian sign of victory slapped right on top of a United States-shaped flag hanging on its wall, dead center on these lands our ancestors stole from their ancestors through brutal conquest, genocide (physical and cultural), and colonization – they might have a thing or two to teach us about just how “United” these states have ever been, and the kinds of tactics we employ to force unity.

So, no Bruce. When I see your attempt at calling forth a ReUnited States – dripping with its symbols of Christian nationalism like these lands have dripped with the blood of the colonized, the blood of the enslaved, the blood of the ill-fated (non-White) immigrant who seeks only a better life for their family through their contributions to making this nation “great” – I don’t see what you see. I’m far more inclined to lean on the wisdom of our Black siblings of this nation who plead with us White folks to stop calling for racial “re-conciliation” when we have yet to experience a time of “conciliation.”   

Then, and only then, will we be for the first time, the land that Langston Hughes envisioned…

“The land that never has been yet – and yet must be – the land where every man [and woman, and genderqueer person] is free.”

And should we reach that glorious destination – in whatever generation it might be – may we all swear our own oath that we need not ever find ourselves requiring a Re-Uniting of these States – but that we will strive each day, and each generation, to ensure…

“America will be!”