President Donald Trump believes that only those “who will support our values and love our people” are welcome in the United States.
His administration warmly welcomes to America white Afrikaners and deports even those hired to feed America’s hogs, mop America’s floors, pack America’s beef, pave America’s roads, pick America’s fruits, roof America’s homes.
Are our values about tens of thousands of U.S. children being separated from their parents by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, tens of thousands of children being detained and being placed in unsafe conditions by ICE?
Is loving our people about what happened in metropolitan places such as Minneapolis-St. Paul, where federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens and detained even Tribal citizens?
Are our values about posting on Truth Social a video depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes, a caricature used to dehumanize Black people?
Are our values about being pardoned and potentially being compensated after the Jan. 6 mob attacked law enforcement officers at our nation’s Capitol? Yet the immigrant who is here to escape persecution, who has prayed with us in church, learned with us in school, cried with us at funerals, is denied process?
Is loving our people about nurturing a political system that thwarts the voice of the people, limits the right to participate in democracy, favors decisions reflecting the will of the powerful and wealthy, and shuts its eyes to those who are under-resourced?
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Are our values about whitewashing history, refusing to acknowledge the past, admit harm done, confess wrongs done, confront injustice done, reconcile the good, the bad, and the ugly of our nation ― to make this land a more perfect union?
Is loving our people about defending our country as we attack other nations, depose their leaders, abduct their leaders, assassinate their leaders, take over and extract their natural resources?
“America has a fever,” to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The nation is in a storm, yet its leaders are obsessed with the answer to whose nation is the greatest of all. The United States reflects not only the answer they seek, not only stars and stripes, not only the Nordic race, but also America hemmed with people in hijabs, people in turbans, people with long beards, people with more melanin.
Cognitive dissonance smokes their conscience. Many desire resting at night, yet despise blackness amid whiteness. Many love to use the sun to tan their skin, yet fear losing power in their whiteness. Many adore living supremely, yet fear the impermanence of the human race.
Many refuse to love one another. Many refuse to care for the stranger. Many cast the first stone. The fever has spread around the world, yet it is not a virus, not a bacterium, not a parasite. Humanity needs medicine, yet no medical doctor can cure the sickness. Fear boils into anger, anger clouds eyes in hate. Hate justifies doing whatever it takes to defeat the enemy. Even invoking God to justify violence.
Last Easter Sunday, Trump’s Truth Social account warned: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”
A week later, an AI-generated image depicting Trump in a Jesus-like manner appeared on his Truth Social account and was later deleted.
As the mercury of hate erupts out of the beacon of hope ― as weapons that can turn the world into dust inch closer to volatile hands, wars break, violence rises, flesh becomes char, cities become rubble ― humanity inches closer to extinction. The world looks the United States in the face and it reflects not just a shining city on the hill, but also its Lady Liberty crumbling, its Lincoln Memorial crumbling, its Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial crumbling, its voting rights crumbling, the dead on Mount Rushmore crying.
Juneteenth is not just about freedom. It is also about justice and peace.
Pope Leo XIV wrote in his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, that the Church’s role in slavery “constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached,” and “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
He preached on Palm Sunday that: “Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.” And appealed on Easter Sunday that: “Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by His immense love for us! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!”
To love our people is to realize that America is a product of grace, that despite atrocities committed against Indigenous persons and enslaved Africans, people from all over the world still come to America to make a dream come true, a dream about a mountaintop with foothills made high by wars, genocide, oppression, emancipation, assassinations ― a dream stretching 250 years since we were founded.
A dream that one day, E Pluribus Unum shall mean America is both one nation and a nation in one world.
Columnist Walter Suza
Walter Suza of Ames writes frequently on the intersections of spirituality, anti-racism and social justice. He can be contacted at wsuza2020@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Juneteenth prompts question of who is valued | Opinion