Reflections of Me: I Am a American

 I am a white man.  A Caucasian, if you will, with ancestral roots going back almost strictly to the U.K.  I was born in Omaha, Nebraska.  I grew up in Northwestern Iowa.  I came to California in my last year of high school, then spent most if not all of the next 5 years back in Iowa and Nebraska.  Most of my friends were Caucasian growing up.

I am also a black man.  And a red, brown, yellow man.  Because what I am, first and foremost, is a American.  I am a product of the wonders of diversity, as well as the mistakes.  I am English, Irish, Scots, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Canadian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Asian, Russian, Indian, Native American, African.  I am here, now, because of the wonder and beauty of what can happen when diverse cultures find a common ground, possess a dream of better things, and work their tails off to try to make it happen.

Men and women, from different races, cultures, religions, backgrounds, with different ideals and opinions but who recognized that everyone should be able to exist and thrive despite those differences.  Who worked, fought, bled, died, starved, and suffered far worse indignities than many of us today can even imagine.  Because they believed that the dreams they had were attainable, that a fledgling little Nation born in bloodshed, pain, and courage deserved the chance to be what it's little founding document envisioned it to be.  That there was a place there, for everyone, to attain their own level of success, to find their own level of contentment, to be free to be whatever they dreamed to be.

Utopia?

No.  America.  Like a cornfield in Iowa, where ghosts from a past child's game can emerge, and merge, with ghosts of the present, and enjoy the wondrous enthusiasm of a talent attained by some, shared by all, performed for all, with childish abandonment and glee.  Over 200 years of hard work, bloody conflicts, cultural divides, and making mistakes then trying to correct them, created me.  It created you.  That creation is still ongoing.  It will always be ongoing.  There will always be mistakes, there will always be those who are wiling to step up and sacrifice to correct them.  There will always be those who are willing to learn from their mistakes, and even more willing to admit them.

And there will always be those who won't.  No matter what race, what gender, what culture, what color they imagine themselves to be, they will resist any truth, any evidence, they may have been wrong.

Both are Americans.  We are here, today, because of them.  We can choose to deny the history, to demean the diversity that created us, or we can choose to embrace it.  To help, in small or large ways, to move forward.  To accept we are none of us a island.  That no one is truly free unless they can accept that they can not do it alone, and that, somewhere along the line, somebody ( perhaps of another race, or gender, or religious belief ) gave of themselves so we could be here today.  That we are not entitled, by racial diversity, skin color, material wealth, or personal beliefs, to be considered better, to be treated better, than anyone else.

Nor any worse.

Yes, I am a white man.  Also a black, red, yellow, brown man.  This does not mean I have any conception of what life has been or is like for any of them, or they for me.  This does not mean I do not acknowledge that I may have benefited at some point in my life just for the color of my skin.  What it DOES mean is, I can listen, I can accept, I can see what I can do to bring about change if at all possible, I can work with them, and not against them.  I can approach them, or they approach me, not as people with different color skin, but as fellow human beings and citizens.  Because.

I am.  An American.

And a American fixes things, and makes things better.