Opinion | What Does It Mean to Love America?

What, to you, does it mean to love America? To believe in it? To choose it? It’s kind of the wrong question — “Do you love America?” It feels like it’s a question created as a kind of a litmus test. It’s like asking: Which child do you love the most? We think that’s an inappropriate question because we have an obligation, we have a responsibility to all of our children. I am an American, and when I think about my foreparents as much as I have been recently, they have fought for me to be an American. Those four million Black people who were emancipated after the Civil War are some of the greatest Americans I can identify, because they committed when it wasn’t rational. They contributed. When it wasn’t appreciated, they persevered. When they were being threatened and menaced, they continued to believe, despite unspeakable abuse and cruelty. I think they’re the greatest Americans. I’m not trying to rank Americans, but if you ask me to name some great Americans, I’m going to name the four million people who were emancipated who continued to fight, just like I would name the people in this community in 1955 who committed themselves to staying off the buses. They were great Americans. And so I want to be a great American, too. I want to be a great American, like my enslaved foreparents. Like my grandparents, who fled terror, violence and fought for a better way. Like my parents, who dealt with the humiliation and degradation of segregation. It’s not the only kind of American, but I want to be a great American. And so my heart is in creating a world where that becomes easier and easier for more and more people, because if I think about America, if I try to reduce it to something, it’s a place for everybody who wants better, who believes in equality, who believes in justice, who believes in fairness, who believes in opportunity. That’s the essence of it. And so to get there, we have to do some work. And it’s been going on for a long time. It will go on for a lot longer. But that’s what I want. Yeah. I want to be a great American in that tradition. That’s a beautiful recasting of that. Not: What does it mean to choose America? But: What does it mean to choose to be a great American? Yeah, yeah.