I didn’t share Ken’s reverence for the pageantry, the performative love of country with no room for the truth about that country. But I do love America. I love its ideals: equality, freedom, liberty, justice. It’s what Langston Hughes meant in 1936 when he wrote, “Let America be America again, for it has never been America to me.” It is how Dr. King could say that his dream was rooted in the American Dream. It’s why Kaepernick’s protest says, “Not so fast. This America isn’t living up to the bargain, so I won’t shake hands until she does.”
