Last month, a number of official and unofficial holidays took place honoring our country. Some of these included President’s Day, Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday. Throughout the year, we will continue to celebrate ways in which our nation is great. 

I for one am extremely thankful for the country I live in. I know it could be a lot worse. However, I cannot take the standpoint that we are the greatest nation or take the viewpoint of those who follow Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again. #AnyoneButTrump.” 

I agree with those who ask, “When was America Great?” With looking back at history, are we talking about when we forced slavery and people would beat their slaves into submission? When we forced those people into Internment Camps because they looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor? What about how women couldn’t vote until 1920? What about how even in modern times people would be beaten, sometimes to death, if their choice in who they married or their sexuality was questioned by those following social constraints? Or let us go even farther back to a time when European explorers first made contact with Native Americans and rape, murdered and killed them through warfare, disease among some atrocities. 

You may think that the first contact between Europeans and Native Americans in the 1550s are not a reason to blame Americans specifically. The problem with that logic is that it doesn’t explain how approximately 15,000 Cherokee Indians were forced to leave their lands in which the Cherokee refer to as “The Trail Where They Cried.” American textbooks seem to dehumanize that the Cherokee were a group of people by referring to this event as “The Trail of Tears.”

I am also leaving out The Depression, mass shootings, the mafia and so many more ways in which America has screwed up in the past. Or what about modern day sex-trafficking, gang violence, rape, murder and all the sins that a decent person can agree upon are evil? Or, those stories where someone will serve time for possession of an extremely small amount of marijuana while a murderer or rapist will get out early and serve less time than the one with possession for “good behavior” or “prison over-crowdedness.”

That being said, I believe that we still have a long way to go before I can feel comfortable and at ease in calling America a great nation. 

We live in a country where we are almost completely divided on every important political and social aspect. I’ve seen more debate over the Confederate Flag in the last year than I would have thought possible and now after the Super Bowl, everyone is flipping out because of what Beyoncé wore during the halftime show.

It isn’t the symbol that causes harm, it is the people that gather a symbol and then go and form hate. If we completely destroy all the symbols of our past, how can future generations learn from them? I mean I remember how many people slept through history in high school and in college, if you aren’t a history major, most people only take the bare minimum of history class requirements for their major. 

I still remember what my junior high teacher said about the Confederate Flag, and she was a nice, elderly black woman. Loosely quoted she told my English class one day that she doesn’t get mad when her neighbors hang a rebel flag. She had talked to them, and they showed kindness and had a completely different meaning for the rebel flag. But for her, she knew what it meant in her history, and she would never get angry over it because it reminded her of all the segregation issues that she went through when she was young and how far America has come. 

My point is, America has not been the best nation and still has a lot of work to do. But I have faith that if the people come together, make wise decisions, agree to disagree, find a moral ground to stand upon and come together as people should and not just our nation but the world, then we could have a great nation once again. I know this seems like a cliché of let us all just get along, but I really do believe that people need to come together and hey, maybe one day we will be as free as New Zealand, the number one free country in the world.