Let's Find Common Ground - Patriotism: Pride, Race and Reckoning. Theodore Johnson

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Memorial Day honors the men and women who sacrificed their lives in service to our country. In our next podcast episode, we discuss different ways to look at patriotism. Our guest, retired US naval officer and Washington Post newspaper columnist Theodore Johnson ponders the question, “How can we take pride in a nation with a history of injustice and inequality?”   At a high school football game, Johnson, who is African-American, stood at attention when the national anthem was played. His teenage son, who was about to play in the game, took a knee in a protest against police brutality. Johnson argues that both acts were expressions of patriotism and is proud of his son's decision.   "For me, being a patriot is not about uncritical celebration and talking only about how exceptional we are and how great the country is," Johnson tells us. "Being a true patriot requires that you both love the nation and critique it." On this insightful episode of "Let's Find Common Ground", Theodore Johnson also discusses his thoughts for how America can have more productive and uplifting discussions about race. Please tell us what you think! Share your feedback in this short survey. For every survey completed, we’ll plant 5 trees.  Common Ground Podcast Feedback Survey (qualtrics.com)

Ted Johnson spent two decades in the US Navy. He's an African-American who loves his country. What follows is a nuanced conversation about patriotism and race. Being a patriot is not about uncritical celebration. It's not about talking about only how exceptional we are, only how great the country is. Being an actual true patriot requires that you love the nation and that you critique it so that

it will be a better version of itself. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Melntite. And I'm Richard Davies. We release this episode to mark Memorial Day, which honors the men and women who sacrifice their lives in service to our country. We discuss different ways to think about patriotism and race with retired U.S. naval officer Ted Johnson. He writes a column for the Washington Post, and he's also a senior advisor to the non-profit

group, New America. Ted is the author of the book, When the Stars Begin to Fall Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of the book when the stars begin to fall, overcoming racism and renewing the promise of America. We start this interview with a personal story that Ted wrote about recently in his column. Ted Johnson, welcome to Let's Find Common Ground. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Let's talk first about something that happened three years ago when you went to watch your son play at a high school football game the crowd stood for the national anthem

Pick up the story of what happened Yeah, where we are in north of Virginia a lot of schools run out with the school flag and the American flag and the anthem plays before Every high school game. I've got three sons, they all have played football, so this was nothing new. And my sons and I had actually talked about Colin Kaepernick and Neal and Derni Anthem and the school had talked about it as well

as there are lots of military veterans and after the military folks that attend. And there was an agreement that basically the kids wouldn't kneel. But after George Floyd was murdered, the conversation changed a little bit. One of my sons asked for a special permission to kneel in the first football game that had following Floyd's murder

as a sign of solidarity with the protest that were happening in the summer, but also sort of a personal declaration of unhappiness with the relationships between black community and law enforcement. And so he kneeled during the anthem. And as you mentioned, I spent a couple decades in the military. I'm a retired naval officer. I didn't kneel and won't.

But I was at the position of attention in the bleachers while the anthem played. While this is happening, I notice a family off to my left who's sort of pointing at my kid and making little snide remarks because he's kneeling during the anthem. I'm upset, but I let it slide free speech and all that, goes both ways. After the anthem finishes, the team starts to rally,

get ready for the game, and the flag they bring out had tumbled to the ground. And so military training kicks in, I bound down the bleachers, grabbed the flag, repost it, and as I'm returning to my seat, the same family that was making snide remarks about my son, the dad, the father, the man sort of steps out into the aisle, thanks me for reposing the flag for them and for honoring the flag. And I had to restrain myself from telling this guy a little bit about himself based on his previous actions. And it's that I just sort of nodded at him and and sidestep them and returned to my seat and enjoyed the game. You know, the idea that within the same family, people can both respect the country, love its symbols, and insist that it's

fallen short, and it's not done enough to reckon with the injustice both historically and contemporarily in our country. This isn't abnormal. This is how Americans have proceeded through this country forever. We've long expressed pride in it, and also instituted it can be better, and this is especially true among black Americans. So in this little moment, you know, on a Friday evening in Northern Virginia, I would like to think that my family displayed how you can hold pride in reckoning together and show that you don't have to choose. You don't have to pick sides and demonize the other side, but that you can do both together and that is actually the fulfillment of the promise of our country and not day in navigation of it. So you didn't think your son was being unpatriotic? Not at all, not at all. But my kid is a military brat. We have lived around the world in many states. We've had lots of conversations about race and the country.

So we know what it means to be American and my kid would not rather be anywhere else. You never feel more American than when you're living outside of the country. How did it make you feel when you saw that family? And I'm presuming by the way that, were they white? Yes, yeah. I intentionally left the race part of it out, but readers got the message.

How does that make you feel when you see that? It sort of builds on this pervasive sense that America is a white Christian nation. And that if you are white and Christian, you are first in line of Americans. And everyone else who is not white or not a Christian is sort of in a secondary or tertiary status in the country. This, of course, isn't true, but this is how the country has operated for much of its history. And if we look at socioeconomic status

and a number of other indicators, we'll see that a lot of the way our society is structured still operates in this way. And then what the man says to me, you know, thank you for doing that for us. And I got the feeling that his us wasn't me and him, that the us was him and his family. And this was sort of an act of service to the real Americans in the audience who loved the flag and loved the country. And this is why it was really hard to bite my tongue, but the only way this could have gone worse

is if I had gotten angry and confronted him and now I'm the angry black, violent man accosting a true patriot for chastising the child that refuses to respect the flag and the story ends potentially quite differently. The man, the family who made snide remarks about your son, were sitting a few seats away from you. What did the man say?

I could hear the murmuring and sort of the, you know, oh my God, or look at this. But I don't know the actual conversation, but it was clear from the facial expressions and from the bits I did here, like look at this kid and oh my God, that they weren't happy. They weren't championing the, in American celebrating or exercising his first amendment right. They were unhappy that this black dreadlock kid was doing what they had seen many black athletes do for years.

I won't say that they were using racial slurs or anything like that. Didn't hear anything of the sort and wouldn't suggest that they did. But they were clearly unhappy. And as a parent, when someone is chastising your child, especially when they're not doing anything wrong, what they said is almost inconsequential to how they behaved when it came to my kid. Your son was 16 when this happened nearly three years ago. When he kneeled, how did he feel about that?

Were you proud or a bit irritated? I was proud that he took a stand. He was the only one that did. And again, he requested special permission from the coach to do so. For this one game, he had never had never kneeled before and has never kneeled since. But I was worried because he was drawing attention to himself.

And that's, I think, more a parental worry than disagreement with the cause of his kneeling. I was actually quite proud that he was independent. He knows me, he knows that I would never do so. He knows that if he had asked me, dad, should I or shouldn't I, which one of my older sons had once did, I encourage them to sort of go with your gut. But here's what may happen.

What if your coach decides that it's a distraction for the team, and there's a punishment that follows? So when it was all said and done, I was very proud of my son. I didn't know beforehand that he had gotten special permission. I didn't know that until afterwards. So he went about it in a very mature way. And you said that when that flag tumbled,

you instinctively went to get it and set it up again. I mean, you've written quite a bit about the American flag and its meaning. But what does it mean to you? Yeah, it's just a symbol that the promise laid out in the Declaration of Independence that we are all created equal, that we all have unalienable rights in among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that government derives its just power from the consent of the governed, the flag represents that for me. Together, they signal that this nation built on an idea large and diverse,

that began removing Native Americans from their land and slaving black folks, oppressing white immigrants and Asian immigrants that came over, that the pursuit of a better version of us is what the entire nation is about, this entire experiment, and the flag represents the potential. It represents the journey that we're on. And then there's the military training

that kicked in at that football game. And the reason I bounded down so quickly was because if a flag fell while we're in the middle of a drill or something like that, it was beaten into us to immediately repost the flag. And so the instinct was just sort of based on my training. But the reason it was so important is because if a flag fell, you saw people

of different races, different genders, different ethnicities from different parts of the country, all sort of rallying to the flag to put it back where it belongs. What does it mean to be a patriot? Yeah, this is a contested question. And I would suggest that most Americans don't agree on the answer. For me, being a patriot means to be proud of your country, to fulfill all your obligations and responsibilities

as a citizen to the country, and to demand that the privileges and rights of citizenship that the state is to extend to its people, that it is extended to you, and if it's extended to you, and not others that you compel the state to extend it to them just as they have to you, and to point out where the nation has fallen short and insist

on addressing those shortfalls. So being a patriot is not about uncritical celebration. It's not about talking about only how exceptional we are, only how great the country is, being an actual true patriot requires that you love the nation and that you critique it so that it will be a better version of itself. You say you cannot love America and avoid the topic of race. Why is thinking about race fundamental to thinking about what it is to be an American. Yeah, so nothing has challenged this nation. It's history, our future, our ability

to function well like race. And so if this is the place you love and the principles of equality and justice and liberty, freedom are things you say you hold dear and you avoid completely the topic of race, then your love is skin deep. It's superficial because you're not grappling with the most challenging thing that the thing you say you love has yet to, to reconcile has yet to solve.

So loving the country means requiring that it confront the demons of race from our history and the way those things play out today. And you've alluded to this earlier, but you've stated that we're really uncomfortable as a society when pride co-exist alongside reckoning. Can you talk a bit more about that? Yeah, when a nation has done something wrong, people are behind the actions. And so when we try to reckon with the things that the nation has done incorrectly, it's

basically groups trying to reconcile how one group has benefited from a set of structures more than the other. And so the conversation between pride and reckoning gets hijacked because as soon as we say something isn't living up to its promise or there's a shortfall, we want to know who is responsible because once we identify who's responsible, then we can put it upon them to fix the thing that they broke. And we also identified the victims who are going to be the recipients of the fixing. And that's a very contentious issue. When you tell a group of white Americans today who never owned an enslaved person who

weren't part of Jim Crow segregation, that it's your group's fault that my group is suffering, it now turns the question of racism in America to a fight between white people and black people, or white people in his people, Native Americans, etc., very, very unproductive. And so that's why reckoning is so difficult because it reduces, sometimes it's reduced to an intergroup conflict instead of a group's ability to enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship. The pride becomes difficult because now you're asking groups that have been historically marginalized, why don't you love America? I mean, I know we enslaved you. I know that you're like your ancestors were removed from their land.

I know that we forced your immigrants, you know, great, great, great grandparents to be indentured servants or we call them all kinds of names and didn't let them live in our neighborhoods. But why can't you love us anyway? It's a very hard thing to try in recordsile. If you were a woman in America, you were not always part of this democracy, no matter what your color. That was a fight.

If you were black in this country, you had to fight. If you were an immigrant in this country, you had to fight. If you were poor in this country, you had to fight. So everyone is a descendant of people who recognized the nation was falling short and loved the nation so much that they were willing to fight to make this place better instead of saying it's a lost cause.

Let's go back to where we came from or let's go find somewhere else to live. And so in order to reckon with a country, you have to express the kind of love and pride in it. Otherwise, why waste the effort to try to make it better? Why not go find somewhere else that's better suited for you? So pride and reckoning naturally coexist, but they've both been politicized to turn people against one another so that we can't stand together in solidarity and demand more of our country.

Talking about race can be painful, it can be difficult. So how do we talk about race and reckoning in ways that could make us feel better rather than being angry or resentful. I think if there's one thing that we can all do, it's to reframe the conversation from being an interpersonal issue into being a sort of systemic or structural issue. When it's interpersonal, that means us three on this call right now need to figure out how to fix racism in America. And as smart as we are, it's not going to happen. We're not going to be able to figure out. And if you take us out of this call and put us with our groups, however we determine, decide what those groups are, and say, okay, hey, you groups, go sit together and hash it out, figure out racism. It's not going to happen, it's gonna feel very zero sum.

And so what I would suggest is that instead of making racism an interpersonal issue, an intergroup issue, we make it an issue between the nation state and its public. And so when we reframe racism as a shortcoming of the way our country operates, now we can all come together because I want you to live in safe neighborhoods just like I want to. I want your want you to live in safe neighborhoods just like I want to.

I want your kids to go to good schools just like I want to. I want you to be paid a fair wage just like I want to. I want you to be able to accumulate wealth, realize the American dream, and I know that we have enough in this nation for all of us to be successful. And so the reframing of the debate to be something between the state and its people, which is what the Constitution is, which is what, you know, our founding documents are about the relationship between government and its people.

Instead of an issue between groups of people, I think that helps take some of the animus out of the personal relationships and allows us to refocus our energies on making a better and more responsive, more efficient government. You're listening to Let's Find Common Ground. Our guest is retired US Navy officer Ted Johnson. I'm Ashley. And I'm Richard. There's a narrow, orange and white banner right at the top of our website at Common Ground Committee, and it says, tell us what you'd like to hear on Let's Find Common Ground. We're asking for your ideas and suggestions. We have some exciting conversations planned in the coming weeks, including one with a claimed PBS journalist, Judy Woodruff, and a discussion between a Democrat and a Republican

on the electoral system, each serves as their state's top election official. But perhaps there's a common ground topic that we've never even thought of. Please share your suggestions. Go to commongroundcommity.org, slash podcasts, and take the brief survey. We read every single response.

Now back to our interview. You wrote, you've written about many things in recent months, but you've written recently about some liberalism on both sides of the aisle. So what do you mean when you say that illiberalism is a threat to democracy from both the right and the left. We're actually a liberal constitutional democratic republic. The liberal part of it means that there are rules, norms, sets of behaviors that are acceptable and those that aren't, and that the rights of the people in the minority

are still to be respected. In a direct democracy, 50% plus one vote means you get to have your way. And the people on the losing side basically are run rough shot over. But in a liberal democracy, just because you lose does not mean you lose your rights. And so in our liberal constitutional democratic republic,

we believe that the rights of all and the majority and the minority, not just racial categories, but political categories should be respected. We believe that we want to implement changes, that there's a method to doing this, and that the people should be engaged to vote on these changes, and then a set of representative bodies to enact these changes. What a liberalism suggests, the rights of the losers don't matter as much as the rights of the winners. And that the winners get privileges that aren't extended

to the losers. And that the rules of the constitutional order can be bent to ensure that we win and the other side loses. And so though it has the veneer of democracy, because it still wants people to vote, it actually rigs it such that those who have power can hold on to it and those who are seeking power to create change have a really, really, really difficult time accessing it. And so on the right, we see things like January 6th, we see things like, you know, people

not believing that elections are fair and challenging the rulings of courts and challenging the authorities laid out the, and often lean into violence and hateful rhetoric to try to address it, whereas on the left, it's sort of like, if the, in order to get policy outcomes that they desire, they're willing to bend the rules a little bit, the bending of the rules is a, is a liberal. And so the example I give in this piece

is when Donald Trump used presidential emergency powers to move money out of the Department of Defense into the Department of Homeland Security to build a border wall. Those on the left said, this is an abuse of power. This is a liberalism. But when after the abortion decision in dobs last year, there were a number of folks on the left that

says, President Biden should declare a presidential the abortion decision in DOBS last year, there were a number of folks on the left that says that President Biden should declare a presidential emergency and make abortion available on military bases or declare a presidential emergency to address climate change or declare a presidential emergency in order to forgive student loan debt. And so now the very powers that they were critiquing on the right and abusing for border wall purposes, there were support for in order to deliver their policy aims. And that too is a liberal. They're not equal.

Violence is worse than forgiving people's student loans. But the liberalism, the abuse of powers and disrespect for the constitutional order is happening on both sides. And that's something we've got to keep. And Ion and in check. America is going to have its 250th birthday a few years from now. I believe it's in 2026. The semi-quinsentennial.

That's right. I have to look that up. I've got to admit. Some of you are working on finding common ground as it relates to that milestone. What are you doing about this? Yeah. So yeah, it's the semi-quince in 10-EO July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the ratification

of the Declaration of Independence, the founding of the country. And so I'm at New America. I direct it's us at 250 initiative, which is thinking about better ways to tell the American story that can be celebrated in 2026. We were compelled to do this

because we started to see on one side this leaning into the pride narrative by the uncritical patriots, who say America is basically the best thing that's out there. We're exceptional and this is a moment for us to shoot fireworks and eat hot dogs and celebrate how great of a nation we have. And then on the other side, we are seeing folks that we're saying there's so much inequality and injustice in the country right now. This is a moment of reckoning and not a moment to celebrate, but a moment to call out how far we have fallen short of who we say we are. What we're saying at us at 250 for the Simiquence Centennial is you can do both.

So let's think about the Simiquence Centennial in terms of pride, reckoning, and aspiration. And we believe that by challenging folks to hold these three things together, that's where the growth opportunity comes, both growing to be a better country, but also growing together. And where we can have that sort of conversation of putting together reckoning and pride, also the peace and aspiration forces us to acknowledge,

do we have a shared vision for this country, or do we not? And if the answer is no, then let's figure out where we're at odds and find some common ground because if we don't agree that pride and reckoning can be held together and we don't agree on a vision for tomorrow for the country, we're going to be in bad shape. Nevermind, come 250, certainly beyond that. So what do you think it is that the military can do to help find common ground and build greater tolerance? Yeah it's a

great question and of course when I thought lots about given my bio my resume and it's also interesting to me that lots of folks look to the military as an example of how to create these multiracial coalitions of people working together for common purpose. And it's probably the most undemocratic institution in the country. The military explicitly says, you lose some of your First Amendment rights, you

lose some of your Fourth Amendment rights when you agree to be in the military. There are things I could not say in uniform. There are parts of privacy that I no longer had. But the one thing it does is it picks people up from where they are, and it drops them in another place surrounded by people who look different than them, pray differently than them, speak differently than them, come from a different economic class than they do do a different culture,

and it puts us in the same room, puts us all in the same uniform, and says, the only way you can be successful in that is if you work with the person beside you. If you're willing to sacrifice your time and talents for the people beside you. And if you do that, not only will we achieve our mission, but you will also achieve your personal goals,

and all of us will get to go home for our families at the end of the day. There's not too many places in America that take Americans across difference and put them in a place together and give them a common purpose. And so in my view, the military can be an example for national service programs, community service programs, or just creating avenues of connection across difference that Americans are opting out of today. We were sort of self-segregating into people that look like us in the same classes as us,

live in the same areas, and we're not cross-contaminating the beauty of our diversity because we're self-segregated into these very homogenous circles. The military breaks those homogenous circles in a way that I think is beneficial for the country. And is Memorial Day an occasion when Americans should find common ground? Yes.

Not finding common ground just in honoring the sacrifice of people who died for our country. There are people who were enslaved and still fought for the country. There are people who were kicked off their land, forced on the reservations, and still fought for the United States. There are people, you know, white Americans, Asian Americans who were treated poorly as immigrants and still fought for the country. So there's honoring that sacrifice is not a not specific to anyone group at all. It's something that we can all do because we all descend from people who gave their lives. But the other way I think it sort of brings us, connects us is that those people died to give us more time to figure out how to make this thing work.

They gave the nation more time to figure out all the things that it hadn't gotten right, to correct the things that it had gotten wrong. And that time that we've been blessed with because of the sacrifices we honor on Memorial Day is something that we should all get behind and not squandering that time is the least we can do to honor the sacrifices of those folks. Ted, you just mentioned the words national service. Do you think America should bring back national service? Would that be a way for more Americans to get to know each other and find common ground? Yes, 100%. I am a proponent of national service. Not just people going out serving their communities and saying, okay, I did my national service, but I think national service as in picking people up from where they are and putting them in different

places in the country with different people in the country and giving them common purpose that helps build the country, but also helps build connections between those folks of different. I'm an absolute believer in that. And I think to the extent that we can make it normative in our country to do national service, and those who opt out for selfless purposes have an asterisk attached to their achievements,

perhaps that can be a way to do it. But there are lots of folks thinking about this, much smarter on this than I am, but the one thing we all agree on is that national service would be a good thing for the country. Ted, thanks so much for doing. Let's find common ground with us. It's been great conversation. Thank you good thing for the country. Ted, thanks so much for doing. Let's find Common Ground with us.

It's been great conversation. Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed it. Ted Johnson speaking with us shortly before Memorial Day. Find more interviews on the website. Also, listen to the latest episode of Artake with Common Ground Committee co-founders Bruce Bond and Eric Olson. Find all our shows at commongroundcommity.org slash podcasts.

I'm Richard Davies. With Ashley Milntite. Thanks for listening. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.