Radical history, rainbows, and the midterms

Sometimes, you need a historian.

U.S. history is rich in radicalism, labor and union struggles, socialist thought and experiment, abolitionism, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, anti-war activism, feminism, LGBT campaigns, indigenous American activism, and more recently, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, green movements, and the revival of union organizing. Search any of these terms and you will find that Americans have been busy and impressive from the start. These battles have been researched and recorded by generations of historians and activists. The record is there, even if it has largely been suppressed by our mainstream media and our own political parties and leaders.

When you tire of reading history, turn to our playwrights, novelists and poets; our blues, folk, soul and jazz artists; our sporting heroes. Look at our independent cinema or the dissident subtexts buried in classic Hollywood film. There are hundreds of gems to uncover along the way, small and large finds that will leave any American wondering how we have allowed so much to be erased from our vision of ourselves and our progressive efforts as a people and nation.

Let's take just one modest example. Yip Harburg, the great lyricist behind dozens of classic songs including the much-loved Over the Rainbow, was a socialist. Americans celebrate the song year after year, with every broadcast of The Wizard of Oz, but few of us pause to remember that Harburg was blacklisted for twelve years. We forget too that this son of immigrants also penned the anthem of the Great Depression, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? And finally, if it's true that Ted Cruz, a favorite of evangelical Republicans, once broke into a rendition of Over the Rainbow at a campaign event, then clearly, he was unaware of Harburg’s atheism. Every so often, when I tire of the religious right and its repeated attempts to drag God into our political discourse – or more specifically, to undermine women’s healthcare and reproductive rights – then I turn to one of Harburg’s poems and smile:

ATHEIST

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree;

And only God who makes the tree

Also makes the fools like me.

But only fools like me, you see,

Can make a God, who makes a tree.

Nor could Cruz, singing away, have been aware of two further facts: the song’s long association with gay pride, and with immigrant hopes and dreams. The Wizard of Oz is still viewed as a queer classic, Judy Garland as a much-loved queer icon, and the song’s lyrics, a plaintive search for a place of freedom and acceptance. And Salman Rushdie’s view of the song could hardly be more relevant to our historical and current treatment of immigrants and refugees:

“In its most potent emotional moment this is unarguably a film about the joys of… making a new life in “the place where there isn’t any trouble.” Over the Rainbow is, or ought to be, the anthem of all the world’s migrants.… It is a celebration of Escape.”

Having lived away from America for so long, I’ve grown accustomed to viewing it from the outside. Knowing something of its domestic and foreign policy abuses, gazing upon its deep and growing inequalities, and regularly hearing the views and perceptions of non-Americans, I could not help but become more critical of my homeland. But - and this too is part of the outsider experience - I remain deeply in love with it. I love it like no other place. I love its history, its promise, its cultural daring and complexity.

In an interview for the Paris Review, James Baldwin articulated a profound understanding of this conflicted love of country that sometimes takes root in those who leave:

“I think that it is a spiritual disaster to pretend that one doesn't love one's country. You may disapprove of it, you may be forced to leave it, you may live your whole life as a battle, yet I don't think you can escape it. There isn't any other place to go--you don't pull up your roots and put them down someplace else. At least not in a single lifetime, or, if you do, you'll be aware of precisely what it means, knowing that your real roots are always elsewhere. If you try to pretend you don't see the immediate reality that formed you, I think you'll go blind.”

Such expressions of conflicted love for America, whether by residents or outsiders, have been largely shut down by our mainstream politics and media cultures. The suppression of our radical histories has proceeded apace. Activists who work to recover them are regularly derided by the love it or leave it brigades. But when that happens, we can reach into history and find Baldwin again:

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." (Notes of a Native Son, 1955)

And we can vote. I hope the ghost of some old radical historian (there are many to choose from) accompanies you into the voting booth tomorrow. The ghost might whisper stories of our historical struggles, help inform our embattled present, and strengthen our efforts to bring about a fairer and more inclusive America. It may help us to find our criticism, but also our love.