I’ve been thinking about the Pledge of Allegiance. Millions of children say the pledge every day, a necessary incantation before first bell. Does anybody think about it? I never did.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.”
We pledge our allegiance to flag and country. We take that pledge with our right hand over our heart. The symbolism is powerful. We pledge our hearts to the republic.
This symbolism escaped me as a boy, but was no less powerful. Through endless repetition I learned to revere the flag. I remember the first time I saw it trampled and burned during the Vietnam War and felt deeply wounded even though I believed the war was a travesty.
“One nation, under God.” I remember when, sometime in the 1950s, the phrase “under God” was added. I suppose this was our answer to those Godless commies. But I just remember how wrong it felt. Not wrong for making people pledge to a God they might not believe in; wrong simply for changing the pledge. Any change was a desecration.
But I was not concerned about desecration. While I felt a twinge of wrongness, I recited the new words without hesitation. I was not a thoughtful boy. Perhaps not a thoughtful man either since it has taken me another 60 years to actually think about the words I recited every morning in homeroom.
My niece was far more thoughtful. She refused to stand for the pledge when she was just 16. After being disciplined and threatened with expulsion, she sued her school. I believe it was the first such lawsuit in her state. I was happy when she won, but I never asked her what her objection was. Was she concerned with being forced to an allegiance she did not feel? See what I mean, I was not a curious person. Note to self: ask her.
“One nation, under God, indivisible.” If “under God” was added to thwart the Red Menace, I suppose “indivisible” was there to thwart the South, to remind them that secession was not just wrong but impossible. You cannot divide the indivisible. But I didn’t think about that either.
“With liberty and justice for all.” Now here is a phrase I can swear allegiance to. And I do. For most of my life I did not realize that these words were aspirational. I believed with all my Superman, Gene Autry, GI Joe heart that this was who we were. America was the land of the free and the home of the brave, wasn’t it? I would have known better if I had grown up with dark skin, but that learning was many years in the coming. Even when I saw Orville Faubus block the school doors, saw dogs and water cannons used against peaceful marchers, I didn’t understand that Jim Crow was so much more than a few misguided laws; it was a way of life. It was openly displayed with white hoods and burning crosses, but it was also an attitude buried deep in my own heart, put there through countless Saturday morning cartoons, and words and jokes, through a black maid eating alone in the kitchen, and Aunt Jemima smiling at me from a box of pancake mix. It was put there as subtly and as firmly as the pledge put the love of my flag.
It has taken me a lifetime to see that we are not the land of the free, and that liberty and justice is not and never has been for all. It is no longer possible to hide from those truths except through willful ignorance or gleeful acceptance of inequality.
I worship neither the fabric of our flag nor the fabric of a culture that insists one race, one religion, one gender, one way of loving is better than another. But in spite of seeing the blatant injustice and corruption that seems so firmly entrenched in our society, I also see and feel the winds of change.
From the Women’s march to Moral Mondays, from marriage equality to the unthinkable diversity of our new Congress, people are claiming rights too long denied. It may not yet be from sea to shining sea, but it is thrilling to feel us moving towards an America where liberty and justice is indeed for all.
Alan Lipp taught mathematics at the Williston Northampton School. He is retired now and taken up full-time grandparenting instead.