I was born and raised in the United States. I love this country. I love what it stands for. I love the freedom it occupies. In fact, that freedom gives me the right to write the following words: the United States of America is an incredibly flawed country.
This isn’t that bold of a statement. In fact, you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find a country that didn’t commit atrocities before in its history. However, the difference between other countries and America is that we don’t take accountability.
As soon as someone tries to criticize the United States, suddenly, people start throwing out ad hominem attacks towards your character. They’ll even assign you different labels, such as “unpatriotic” and “communist.” I don’t recall pointing out bad behavior being in any of Karl Marx’s theories.
Furthermore, I don’t think it is unpatriotic to admit the faults of this country. In fact, if we know about how we used to be, we can, as a nation, be proud of the progress that we have made since. As stated by philosopher George Santayana:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
A lot of the reasons that America can’t take criticism is because of a lack of education reading the full extent of U.S. History. History is written by the victors, and a lot is omitted in history classes throughout the United States because it paints the country in a bad light.
One of the main issues that isn’t fully explained in common-core history classes is the extent of slavery and how rough it truly was. One thing that I learned while writing this article is that while slavery was made illegal after the Civil War, slavery still existed until the 1940s in a form known as neo-slavery.
Neoslavery was the practice of slavery after the Civil Rights Movement, and the way it was done was using legal loopholes. In the novel, “Slavery By Another Name” by Douglas A. Blackmon, the author tells the story of a young man charged with vagrancy. At the time, vagrancy meant not having a job.
The young man, named Green Cottonham, committed no crime, but he was arrested. He was swiftly found guilty, and when he couldn’t pay his court fees, he was sentenced to an extra year of hard labor. It was then that he was approached by the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company.
They paid off Cottonham’s bail under the condition that he worked for the company for cheap. Cottonham became a warden of the corporation, and instead of one year of hard labor, he had to suffer a lifetime of work with very little pay.
Furthermore, the treatment of Cottonham and other forced laborers was as bad as chattel slavery since the companies treated the laborers as if they were disposable. All that would have to happen is another man would be charged with vagrancy, and you have successfully replaced a worker. This disposability shows true as in a four-month span, at least six of Cottonham’s co-laborers dropped dead and were replaced shortly after by other laborers.
This was slavery. Full stop. This was enslaving human beings for forced labor for a corporation. Sure, the workers were paid, but the workers had to pay back the debt they owed to the company, plus interest, and so were condemned to slavery for the rest of their lives.
Slavery and subsequent neo-slavery aren’t the only times white Americans have subjected another race to suffering. One must also consider the genocide committed against Native Americans. The United States was a growing nation and needed more room to expand its population. If this is starting to sound familiar, this is the same tactic Adolf Hitler used for “Lebensraum.” Source: The New Yorker.
Killing Native Americans for more room wasn’t the only thing white Americans did, they also weaponized food by killing and subsequently starving a large portion of natives. How did the Americans starve the Native Americans? They did this by killing a ton of buffalos. An army general was documented, stating: “Kill every Buffalo you can! Every Buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”
By murdering all the buffalos in an area, the colonial Americans starved the Native Americans into submission and would eventually give up their land to the colonial Americans. Instead of condemning this weaponization of food, we Americans embraced it.
One of the few remnants of this genocide can be found in the NFL. The Buffalo Bills are the only NFL team in New York State. The Buffalo, New York-based team is named after a western outlaw named, “Buffalo Bill Cody.” Cody was known for killing many buffaloes, hence why he was named that way.
Now, I do not believe that the Buffalo Bills should change their name. I believe that is just performative and not beneficial. Renaming would only cause further division in the nation. What should happen, though, is educating on this atrocity in the common core curriculum so that we all know the true story.
To make the situation worse, after being kicked off their land, Native Americans weren’t given U.S. citizenship until 1924. President Calvin Coolidge signed the “Indian Citizenship Act” in response to many Native Americans enlisting in World War One.
To me, what shocks me the most about this story is that Native Americans enlisted in the first place. When they were fighting in the war, they weren’t even considered citizens of the U.S. and yet they still fought for a country that didn’t even want them to exist.
As a society, America has gotten better since 1924. In fact, 100 years after Native Americans received citizenship, President Joe Biden made a long overdue apology for the U.S. government’s role in oppressing Native Americans.
We should be allowed to criticize and admit the faults of the United States without being ad hominem to silence. We should be able to have these uncomfortable conversations because, as great as America is, there are countless issues with America right now.
However, if we are never able to discuss these issues with America, both historic and contemporary, then we will never grow and heal from it. Americans should not be so sensitive to criticism because a society without criticism doesn’t help anyone. A society without criticism is an immature society, like a petulant child who gets told no for the first time.
Look, I love America. I love the opportunities that I have here. I’m proud of being an American, but when we bury our heads in the sand, we show our immaturity as a young nation.
No country is perfect. Every place has issues, both historic and current. To advance society to be the best it can be, we must address our faults and atrocities. To open the door of progress, we must use the key of change.
Andrew Sarhan is an 18-year-old mass communication freshman from Baton Rouge, La.
