Whose House is it, anyway?
The American contradiction of “We the People” was on display during yesterday’s insurrection. It’s time we acknowledge it.
In the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol building, I find myself replaying the words said by Vice President Mike Pence yesterday. “To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win,” Mr. Pence said. “Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s house.”
To me this seemed an early declaration of victory, an oversimplification of a catastrophic day. One question especially keeps rolling in my mind from his words. What do we mean when we say the people’s house? Who are the people? “We the People” is a question that seems to still haunt America, a contradiction that traces itself to the origins of this nation and the origins of the insurrection we saw play out yesterday.
Strikingly, those who trespassed and destroyed the Capitol did not tread cautiously, they did not hide their faces. They got in with ease, a stark contrast to daily security and certainly a different handling than the Black Lives Matter Protests of last summer. They walked the halls with the arrogant pride, and carried the flag of their racist forefathers with them. They looked at home.
To them, they are undoubtedly the people, and this is indeed their house. And have we as a nation in a sincere, enduring, resounding, manner ever yet proved them otherwise?
We saw them traipsing through Statuary Hall, the part of the Capitol dedicated to housing statues donated by each state honoring historical figures. Among these statues are confederate framers, including Jefferson Davis, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, Joseph Wheeler, and Zebulon Baird Vance. One generation of statued treasonous men hosted their modern-day counterparts, uninvited but somehow not out of place among the company of their ancestors whose flag they carried.
Why do we have friendly mementos of racist traitors in the Capitol hallways? What does the diligent shining of a statue to a corrupt ideal in a sacred democratic space do to our collective conciseness? Does it give that ideal a literal pedestal, so that some are more at ease when we see it resurrected in a red hat?
Statues symbolize what we value — what we acknowledge, and what we honor. In the history of America, we have yet to fully acknowledge and rebuke the damage of racism in this country, a lasting and poisonous root that continues to bear fruit. At every level of our society, we need to take stock of what got us to this moment. What pieces of history do we continue to brush over as in the past? What components of our lives are affected by the lot of our ancestors? (hint: generational wealth, generational trauma, lasting impacts from discriminatory policies, to name a few). What is missing in this story we have been told from birth about America? Who are its authors — and critically — who are not?
Many men storming those halls would reckon themselves patriots. If you can only love your country in its myths of greatness then you do not know what it is to love a county at all. There is no more profound balm for the American people at this juncture than for white Americans to examine our own internalized white supremacist delusion. To acknowledge harm done historically and in our own lives from this mindset, and draw the connection to the lasting impacts on our nation. If we want to heal as a country, we must start by working to cut off at the head this persistent delusion.
As Eddie Glaude Jr. writes in his book Begin Again, America finds itself from time to time at critical moments where we can either acknowledge this ever-present past, or ignore it and continue down our harmful path. Let this be the moment — finally — where we surrender for good the idea that this is surprising, that this is not the America we know. Let us acknowledge with the deepest love and profound heartbreak that this is the only America we have ever known. And then let us rebuild.
Further reading:
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Begin Again by Eddie S Glaude Jr.
