AMERICA
Barack Obama. Kendrick Lamar. The bright lights of New York City. “The Office.” Obamacare. “Parks and Recreation.” Beyoncé.
This was the America that I fell in love with as a teenager living in England. Blindly at first; drawn to the near-industrialised cultural output, by the size, by the ambition, by the politics of the first Black President.
I wanted to move there, I wanted to have moved there. I saved up money from a part time job in a supermarket and in my second year of university I went to New York City for a month – volunteering with New York Cares and exploring the city in between. From the southern tip of Manhattan all the way up to the Bronx, New York City was everything I thought America would be. Bold, brash and utterly unashamed about it. I was there when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare; I picked up a copy of the New York Times I still have to this day. America was untouchable, progressive, with a black man as President and a black woman as First Lady.
You can see where this is going.
The 2016 election coincided with me doing an MA in US history and politics. Suddenly, there it was in front of me – a history of unimaginable violence, cruelty, racism, sexism, misogyny, and white supremacy. All synthesized into one election. How could I have been so blind? White male privilege and willful ignorance are a powerful combination. But even then, I was convinced that America, with its contradictions as bad as any other colonizer (and let me be clear, the UK is no better), wouldn’t elect Trump.
And then you did. I am not going to talk about that day – mainly because there have been enough tortured Internet think pieces written about it to last the rest of his term and another. Nor am I going to pass judgment as if the UK is some enlightened country where we don’t have the same problems as our former compatriots across the Atlantic. Slave ships passed through our docks, we colonized and enslaved, we implemented and enforced white supremacy, and we continue to be unwilling to deal with structural racism in any meaningful way. But, the election result forced me to grapple with my own ‘special relationship.’
I asked (and continue to ask) myself, what do I think of America now? The most fashionable view here in the UK is negative – stories coming out of the US seem to alternate between naked white nationalism and racist police brutality. Trump was and remains equal parts laughing stock and architect of improvisational cruelty. It’s easy to dismiss America right now – a nation of idiots and racists, the country fading from its once vaunted status.
Like any real love, I’ve found mine of America endures. Sure, it’s changed – I used to blindly love the country, now I love the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met, but I’m more suspicious of the places I’ve not been to, and the people I haven’t met. I’m more aware now – America has many, many, problems and to ignore them is to be ignorant. But to dismiss America is not an option either – its pop culture is as much ours as it is American, it remains the only country to have its domestic policy covered as much as its foreign policy abroad, and its foreign policy arguably still sets the world agenda.
More than that though, it’s just boring to dismiss America. It’s easy to do that, rather than try to hold the good and the bad up to the light. Presidents come and go, but the United States remains a superpower with almost no equal–in hard power just about, but in soft power it’s undisputed. Try going a day without hearing about an American news story, or without listening to an American music artist or an American podcast, or without watching an American TV show. America the country does not own these things, but to say America isn’t worthy of attention is to disregard the culture that produced the pop culture we all devour.
So what do I think? America, I think you’re a mess, more so than usual. You’ve got the hangover of a history littered with crimes against humanity and now you’ve elected a racist bigot wannabe nationalist dictator. Clearly, there is work to do.
You’re too big to ignore, and you’re too interesting to look away from, and much as it might be easier for me, I just can’t stop thinking about you. So, when you’re ready to do the work, I’ll be here. Somehow still in love.
