Child of empire
by Emily Mekash
Image from Geez 14, photo by Nicole Lee
I’m a citizen of the most affluent country in the world. Both of my grandfathers were decorated war veterans. My ancestors owned slaves. I can recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the Gettysburg Address and the preamble to the Constitution without so much as batting an eye. I am an American.
Further still, I am a middle-class white kid who grew up in the Midwest. I was raised on a steady diet of patriotism and duty to God and country. In this setting, conscientious objectors were traitors and not voting meant shirking your civic duty.
I can vividly recall, when I was 8 years old, writing a poem about how great my nation was and reading it to a classroom of my peers. It was President’s Day, and we were encouraged to don red, white and blue clothing. Cory, one of my classmates, read a supernaturally long poem his mother had sent with him. I can still hear him shyly reciting something about Old Glory and the trenches in Europe. Looking back, that grade-school realm of empire seems surreal.
And whether you want to chalk it all up to ethnocentrism or naïveté, it honestly never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with how my country went about things. I never realized anyone else thought there was something wrong with the U.S., unless you count those “terrorists” in the far-flung regions of the “Middle East,” wherever that was.
Moved to Canada
My starred-and-striped worldview was called into question when, as bright-eyed 18-year-old, I moved to Canada for college. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people who did not see eye-to-eye with me about the motherland. I was called “Yank” and “Yankee,” which, I suppose, was not nearly as bad as it could have been. And whenever my ignorance showed, some kind-hearted soul was there to inform others: “Don’t worry; she’s American.”
One day as I was having lunch in the campus cafeteria, the table talk turned to the Iraq War. I squirmed in my plastic seat. I was the only American at the table, and so I felt it my sacred duty to say something in defense of the pre-emptive strike. But before I had the chance to utter a single “God bless America,” a guy at the table, in complete seriousness, called me a warmonger. Flabbergasted at the accusation, I excused myself from the table. American, Yankee, warmonger – being American was no longer a badge of honor and pride; it was an ugly epithet.
In the four years that have past since I began college, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with my country and the decisions it makes. I don’t support the war in Iraq. I don’t support government-sanctioned torture (or any other torture for that matter). Our economic system has made the rich even richer, and the poor even poorer. And yet, my mailing address is still Roseau, Minnesota. My passport has an eagle embossed on the front. Every April, my tax dollars go into Washington’s coffers. America has become my awkward cousin; I feel strong familial loyalty to her, but I don’t want to claim her.
Some hope
Barack Obama has given me some hope for my country – hope that maybe the poor won’t be ignored, that this six-year long war won’t go on forever, that my country won’t be forever run by rich white males (though we still need to work on the rich and male part), and that maybe the rest of humanity won’t think we are trying to turn the world into our own homogenized empire. I have hope that things can change, yet I know America is still America. Big. Rich. Powerful. Selfish. Blind.
In less than a month, I will be marrying a Canadian. Our plans in life don’t include a return to the red, white and blue. “Why do you want to leave the U.S.?” my polite American friends ask me. “You want to live in Canada!?” the impolite ones say, as if I had just told them I was planning to live in a pup tent in the Mojave Desert. Some days I feel as though I am caught in an international tug of war between the nation I was raised in and the nation I came of age in.
So for now, I live in that uncomfortable space of being a reluctant American. Of feeling bound to a country that I no longer agree with. It’s the awkwardness of being American.
Emily Mekash is an intern with Geez. She grew up in Roseau, Minnesota and now lives in Otterburne, Manitoba
[From Geez magazine No. 14, Summer 2009. Subscription info here. ]
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The title took me right to this article. Empire, awkward, yes, but you’re not alone. Most of us are children of empire [see my website]-even Canadians. I am reading about the Nikkei fishermen during World War II and before – awkward reading for Canadians.
— Phyllis Reeve · May 30, 01:07 AM · #
Thank you so much for this article! I am an American also, grew up in the mid-west and moved to Manitoba from North Dakota. I was never very patriotic and because of that I did not fit into the flag flying area that I was raised. The ideals of America, always struck me much deeper then their actual actions, and for that it was difficult not to seem “treason-like” to all those that blindly spouted American rhetoric. I remember seeing a bumper sticker some years ago that fits the unsettling feeling perfectly, “ignorance is patriotic, truth is treason.” Though many things bother me greatly about the states, and I agree with most of the negative that is exposed about us, I do wish that all Americans were not viewed as ignorant and ethnocentric as there are by many people- America is a country of diversity and I have met the extremes of ignorance to the depths of intelligence within the borders of the states. I am happy to call Canada my home right now and plan to stay even though there are some things I do miss about the states. Living in Canada is a wonderful experience, as it has shown me the many ways that I do behave like an American and the extreme material affluence that I grew up within. One day in the near future, I do look forward in saying that I am a Canadian citizen, and just the sound of it does not give me that uneasy feeling that I have when I say I am an American.
— lisa edwardson · Jul 9, 07:58 PM · #