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Saluting a Flag Doesn’t Make You Patriotic

Posted on Sep 15, 2016 by Trevor in Politics

I’m so sick of all this faux patriotism that is merely an excuse for people to pretend they’re fighting for—and care about—a better America.

Saluting a flag doesn’t make you patriotic. Standing for an anthem doesn’t either.

In doing so, you haven’t put anything on the line. You haven’t stood up for the tired, the poor, or the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

As Ebony writer Michael Harriot put it, these athletes’ recent protests have “exposed a population of people who believe Black people respecting the symbols of liberty and justice is more important than Black people actually getting liberty and justice.” Our armed services didn’t sacrifice their lives for the flag. They sacrificed their lives for what the flag stands for.

And forcing someone to stand for the anthem only adds a sick layer of irony to all this irrationality.

Being patriotic is caring whether America is fulfilling her promises to those who are underprivileged. It’s being willing to fight to ensure “the land of the free” is a land where all enjoy equal treatment. That takes hard work and open-mindedness and a listening ear, not complacency and justification and manufactured outrage. It’s hard. But then again, easy patriotism was probably never worth anything in the first place.

Tags: featured, patriotism