When I was in elementary school, I remember reading a story in reading class about a young American girl who was living in Britain for reasons that I do not recall. The hinge of this story was that before classes each day at the school she attended they would stand, face the flag, and sing "God Save The Queen." In itself, this is nothing particularly remarkable, as I recall that I was in a grade where the pledge of allegiance was required before each day in my own grade.
However, the conflict of the story is that this young lady is an American. She doesn't want to sing "God Save the Queen," because, as an American, she doesn't believe in the legitimacy of Queens and such. Given that this was a story in a 3rd or 4th grade reader, there was not a great deal of abstract political theorizing, or moralizing. The thrust of the story was that, as an American, she should not have to sing a song about a queen despite the fact that she is living in a country ostensibly "ruled" by a queen.
The story resolves itself when a clever uncle reminds her that the song "America" (aka. "My Country, Tis of Thee") shares an identical tune with "God Save the Queen." So she resolves to sing the American lyrics softly. The end.
I have been thinking about this particular story a great deal as our nation withdrew from Afghanistan, and the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001 approached. I thought about it as I sat in an Indian restaurant and listened to the father at the next table explain to his high school daughters the Imperialist justification for the invasion, while they took the abandonment of Afghan women and girls to the tender mercies of the Taliban as a major offense against decency and humanity. I thought about it during a particularly shouty faculty meeting where issues of diversity and equity had been raised. I thought about it as I scanned the news scrolls on Fox and CNN.
What was the point of the story of the girl? A story which has stuck with me even if I cannot recall its title. Was I to admire her bravery in her refusal to sing the lyrics to a song with which she did not fundamentally agree? Or perhaps a refusal to embrace "when in Rome," on the grounds of national exceptionalism was to irk me. Or perhaps I was to admire the skills of compromise that can be found in civilized society. Some days I think one way, some days I think the other.
This is a nation where a pledge to the flag is nearly ubiquitous in schools despite the fact that is cannot be legally enforced (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette). Politifact found that though not universal, recitation of the pledge is plenty common throughout US schools. Even as recently as 2019, a black student was charged with a misdemeanor surrounding his refusal to recite the pledge. I can only imagine what the "love it or leave it" crowd would do to a child refusing to say the pledge. Yet with the same breath we are to admire a fictional girl who won't do similar in her host country.
And perhaps, even as we applaud her compromise, are we heading down a terrible path? Here she just does her thing quietly so that way everybody can get on with the business of the day. No muss, no fuss. But in doing so, is she not like The Magistrate in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians? Is she simply offering herself a personal salve to soothe the feeling of not standing up against something she feels is systemically wrong? She is able to have her special "American-ness" but not address the root of the issue, kicking the can down the road for another to deal with.
This story comes back to me again and again in the same way a cut on the inside of your mouth moves in and out of consciousness. And I feel it illustrates something deeply troubling about this country. It illustrates the quiet civility of the do-nothing liberal, who has all the right thoughts but does not act on them. It illustrates the "America first, love-it-or-leave-it" conception of exceptionalism whereby special privilege is given for being "part of the club."
Perhaps I am making a simple grade-school reading activity carry too much. It's just a story to teach kids how to read, after all. However, we should keep in mind that it is precisely our "non-challenging" media that we need to be most acutely aware of, as that is where we will find our values painted in the broadest strokes.
