Perfecting Democracy is the Duty of Every American Citizen

OpEd By James Haywood Rolling, Jr.

October 19, 2011 - In the aftermath of the tremendous fraud and loss in the private business sector that precipitated the Great Recession, the recent Occupy Wall Street movement and other affiliated protests, I have begun to consider what it means to perform contemporary democracy. I recently joined a small community-based musical theater project here in Syracuse called the Dream Freedom Revival; we are guided by the ethos that “democracy is driven by those who participate in it.” Our inaugural performance was held on October 9 at the newly opened La Casita Cultural Center at 109 Otisco Street. We often forget that participation in a democracy involves much more than standing on the sidelines, applauding as if it was a parade through our neighborhood.

Whether we speak of the historical Abolitionist, woman’s suffrage, and Civil Rights movements—or the more recent Arab Spring, and Occupy Together movements—there is a creative, narrative, and often counter-narrative to social movements, attempting either to tell a story, or to resist the telling of a story that falsely names, too neatly packages, or utterly obscures a life-sustaining truth. One of those inalienable truths is that identity is a work of art—and that the process of making identity is messy, especially in a democracy where so many contradicting ideas compete for our attention.

It is important to note that the difference between these progressive movements and the conservative Tea Party movement is the difference between forward motion and reactionary behavior—it is the difference between struggling ahead towards greater mutual advantage, versus the noisy rhetoric of “taking back” an America that is seen as the private property of only true patriots. But who gets to define a true patriot? And who enjoys the privilege of rendering the patriot who fights for a different set of ideas about how to make our nation greater as someone totally invisible or insignificant?

The story of American identity has never been privately owned—and patriotism is often expressed by standing against those that tell you to sit down, like when Mr. Smith went to Washington against all odds, as performed on film by Jimmy Stewart. That acting performance still resonates as a portrayal of a real American even today. Why? Because, like the acts of non-violent resistance presented to the world by Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the best performances of democracy always stand the test of time.

One thing stands out in the daily clamor—our identities are often shaped in opposition to what we most adamantly claim not to be. Accordingly, there are those who will only recognize the performance of conservatism as the mark of a great American, or assume that only liberals are able act with open minds. In reality, every identity is a performance either of whom we think we are in the world, or whom we wish to be. Our competing claims about personal identity are as varied as the stories we tell of America, and every reinterpretation of America’s possibilities has important consequences. Performances of patriotism are as real as everyday life—every patriot’s act of courage, no matter how each act differs, is a duty performed out of the belief that our nation or loved ones stand in dire need of our contribution. Like a complicated conversation, these performances of civic duty sometimes overlap, sometimes argue, and often confound the hearers. For instance, there are conservatives who are elitists and who shamelessly indoctrinate in and out of the classroom; likewise, true social justice advocates are not motivated to act for the sake of overthrowing America. In truth, the diversity of our various performances of democracy simply reflect the diversity of our nation.

By labeling others as dangerous merely because they perform democracy differently, it is easy to drum up quick support to demonize and expel anyone who threatens the identity of one’s selected tribe. After all, people will fight to the death to maintain an absolutely certain identity because they think they will die if they don’t. But as long as we each participate and remove ourselves from the sidelines, are we really a threat to one another? As long as we perform democracy, don’t we help keep the conversation going about what our nation might one day fully become?

The United States is still growing up, still figuring itself out. One great threat to democracy is the apathetic viewer who applauds but does not add a voice, waiting inertly only to see what happens next—this is the one who contributes no ideas to the ongoing performance of the nation’s best potential. But the most dangerous enemy of democracy of all is the one who divides voices from one another; they are often found on the airwaves or broadcast television, ranting their own point of view so loudly and angrily, no one else can hear their neighbor at all. If the American identity is ever to be viewed as a finished masterpiece of collaborative democracy, much of the dialogue will have to be left open to the future interpretation of our next generation of citizens. Let’s take care to hear what they have to say. And let’s respond in kind, thinking and speaking for ourselves.

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Dr. James Haywood Rolling, Jr. is a professor of Teaching and Leadership and chair of Art Education at Syracuse University. His new book is Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook About Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff That Matters (AltaMira Press).