The video clips and still photos on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe are disturbing and inescapable. I cannot stop watching and looking. First, there are the flags… American, yet mixed with Trump banners and Confederate “Stars and Bars” as though they all represent the same ideology; there are also calls for “strength not weakness,” “Trial by Combat,” and “Kickin’ ass” from men who masquerade as national leaders but instead sow discord; there is the kaleidoscope of red MAGA Hats and camouflage gear captured in film and self-congratulatory selfies; the “things they carry” of zip-ties, pipe bombs, bear spray, and weapons; the chants against election fraud, and threats of violence against Speaker of the House Pelosi, Senator Schumer, and even Vice President Pence whose loyalty to President Trump is rewarded with the chant, “Hang Mike Pence!”

          The images of January 6, 2021 depict a riotous mob inflamed by a treasonous philosophy that is shameful, destructive, dangerous, and un-Patriotic, and, despite calls of “Liberty” and chants of “USA!” this was, pure and simple, a White mob reminiscent of those that roamed the eras of Reconstruction and Jim Crow and appeared in the novels of William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. These were not Patriots; they were desperate zealots fighting for another “lost cause” as anti-American as the first.

          And the more I watch, the more unsettled and depressed I become, and I know why. Those who invaded the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, with intent to disrupt and overturn an election, to show their allegiance to a divisive President, and to take elected leaders hostage or worse, are overwhelming White men. They are young, middle-aged, and seniors; they are Republicans and Independents; they are Christian and anti-Semitic – both Jesus and swastikas appear on signs, T-shirts, and arms; they are from Fire Departments and corporations, they are carpenters and police officers, they are ex-military and current teachers. They are just like me. I share Whiteness with them, as well as its subversive racist power to claim ownership of America’s symbols and definitions – the flag, “Freedom!” the Republican Party, “Stop the Steal!” and Patriotism. And when the mob stormed the United States Capitol to threaten and vandalize in a quixotic mission, the desire to Make America Great White Again was on full display.

          Then came the recurring, gnawing reality that my White, male, Christian, and Straight, identities, some of those Audre Lorde refers to as The Mythical Norms of America, link me to that mob. Ironically, my “mythical” identities also afford me the individuality and independence to disassociate from them, to proclaim: I am not like them, even as I witness that so many of those insurrectionists, terrorists, and racists are just like me. My Whiteness allows me the privilege of an “off-ramp” to absolve myself of any blame or responsibility and to hide behind what I would prefer to hold up as differences of values, of politics, of education, of region; I can use “them” not “us” when discussing the incident. My individuality is a privilege of being within The Mythical Norm, one that is not extended equitably to other Americans.

          However, it is time for me to acknowledge the commonalities of the shared identities of Gender, Religion, and, most notably, Race and to examine my silence, my advantages, my access, and my privileges that derive from merely being White. As James Baldwin writes in The Fire Next Time, “Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.” Now, I need to confront the reality that Race is not only the primary identity that connects me to those who stormed the Capitol; our shared Whiteness also emboldens them to believe that they are true American Patriots who are acting on my behalf as well as their own.

          Perhaps it is also time for me, and for all of us, to acknowledge who are true American Patriots. They are African Americans in Georgia (and elsewhere) who showed up at the polls despite disenfranchisement and attempts from the President, and others who are White, to first tilt and then change the election, and they are women who refuse to accept a male-centric definition of leadership and to rise within “a heartbeat” of the Presidency because women have already broken glass ceilings in medicine, academia, and law (RIP RBG), and they are Native Americans whose tribes and lands still bear the scars of genocide, duplicity, and racism, yet they have achieved representation in the next Cabinet as well as a storied presence in Military history, and they are those in the LGBTQ community who demand the same deserved rights and liberties as those who would use hateful bias and deliberate intolerance against them, and they are Asian Americans who simultaneously shoulder the burdens of being the “Model Minority” and racist associations with a pandemic mismanaged by this administration, and they are Muslims and Jews, Sikhs and Buddhists, Agnostics and Atheists, who insist in the expression of their faiths and beliefs that there must be Separation of Church and State since, as Baldwin reminds us, America cannot be a nation reserved for Christians if Christianity does not work on behalf of all Americans, and they are members of the Latinx community who have fought with dignity, resilience, and courage against xenophobic Immigration policies and practices designed to break their spirits and their families. These are true American Patriots.

          The inescapable photographs and videos of January 6, 2021 chronicle a repugnant angry mob of predominantly White American men who, filled with bias and rage and empowered by the blessings of Trump and others, went to the United States Capitol to disrupt a conclusive and fair election, to harm political leaders, to knock America from its moorings as the world’s longest standing democracy. And if I allow myself to sink back into the prejudices and privileges of Whiteness and to quietly listen to its tribal appeals, or to distance myself from Racism, Anti-Semitism, Homophobia, and other societal sins only when they become too ruthless, or to let myself off the “hook” of personal responsibility, or to assume that after January 20, 2021, things will simply go back to a “normal” standard of racial advantage that I enjoy, then I become complicit in the “rainbow sign” of vengeance that Baldwin warns us will come if we do nothing. 

So, for the time being, I look elsewhere for American Patriotism, not because White men cannot be “Patriots,” but because we do not deserve to automatically assume that self-ordained title if we deny it to others who fully embody true American Patriotism now that we need it most.