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PATRIOTISMThe other day someone defined patriotism, so far as it con* f cerns the Negro, as loving a country that hates you. In some respect this is true, but the situation is not exactly as bad as this sounds. Even the trades unionists who deprive Negroes of the opportunity to make a living and the segregationists, who deny Negroes the enjoyment of social and civic facilities,' like the Negro as long as he is satisled with drudgery and j( exclusion from all higher spheres. It may be said, too. that 1 both the ignorant and the mentally developed “Uncle Toms’*,* are loved by the exploiters and oppressors of the weak. If,1 the Negro will just cease to be ambitious and will stay where j1 he is put he will have no trouble in this country, but if he tries to rise to the highest levels in the economic and political 1 spheres he will be struek down by the “patriots’* of this 1 country.The Negroes, as a majority, will hardly heed this warning. They will ever struggle to attain the best the United States can afford its citizens; and they will not suffer themselves eternally to be denied full privileges of citizenship, cer- a tainly not by foreigners who have not been here long enough ^ to apeak the English language and so readily become embittered against Negroes whose forebears were in America a century even before the English began to settle the Atlantic Coast In the seventeenth century. Most Negroes love the United States, although they can have no kind feeling for the slave- j holder, the serf-driving planter, the robber industrialist, and j the agent of the Jim Crow. It is not necessary for a citizen f( to love these hostile elements in order to love his country. In ! * such a spirit the Negroes may join wholeheartedly in the ^ fight against despotism while insisting at the same time that b* they, too, should be relieved of the despotism in the United s( States.We think ordinarily of patriotism as love of one’s coun- * try and devotion to its welfare, but the mere definition fails 1* to convey the real meaning of the word. It depends upon one's interpretation of love for one’s country. Some men wthink that they show patriotism when they work men at starvation wages and become rich enough to leave a large sum to endow an institution to perpetuate their namesSome men believe that they are the greatest of all patriots because they array the people of one religion against those of | another faith and drive out the embattled communicants. A large number of citizens in the United States say openly that ur they show their love for this country when they lynch Negroes j scj and burn them at the stake. Robert Hall spoke wisely, then, |Ylt; when he said, “Patriotism is a blind and irrational impulse th unless it is founded on a knowledge of the blessings we are j 8r called to secure and the privileges we propose to defend.The statesmen of our country have expressed themselves on \ he matter of patriotism and we may learn much from them. John J. Crittenden, the compromiser of the Civil War crisis, had a sort of blind patriotism, for he said, “I hope to find my country in the right; however, I will stand by her, right or wrong.” In a sense this is the right position to take, but this was the mistake made by Robert E. Lee. He was in the fee United Slates Army at the outbreak of the Civil War; but citi looking upon Virginia as his native land, he went with his ticasoiantrcagthlt;CoiwaiNejdajIntitraicunstate to its doom. Lee should have had enough vision to understand that the so-called sovereign states had ceased to be separate and distinct countries and unconsciously had become welded into a Union. Lee was far behind Patrick Henry who four generations earlier had said, “I am not a Virginian, but an American.** Clay once remarked, “I have heard something said about allegiance to the South: I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.” Robert C. Winllirop had the same idea when he said, “There are no points of (he compass on the chart of true patriotism.” Emery A. Storrs likewise thought, “Patriotism knows neither latitude nor longimde. It is not climatic.”Henry Giles believed, “It should be the work of genuine and noble patriotism to raise the life of the nation to the level of its privileges; to harmonize its general practice with its abstract principles; t*» reduce to actual facts the ideals of its institutions; to elevate instruction. into knowledge; to deepen j knowledge into wisdom; to render knowledge and wisdom nothedenthelonjthesonthaltheComplete in righteousness; and to make the love of country perfect in the love of man. ”—CARTER G. WOODSONDantonthe
Newspaper Details
Call and Post
Cleveland, Ohio, US
Sat, Nov 06, 1943
Page 20
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 22 Oct 2023
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