At Obama Center, Democracy’s Triumphs and Contradictions Share the Stage
By Stacy M. Brown
A friend of mine once said that America is the only country that insists on grading its own homework.
I thought about that recently while listening to speeches celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday, watching politicians wrap themselves in flags and founders, and hearing Michelle Obama stand before thousands at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center and describe it as “a living testament to the power of choice” and “an urgent call to go out there and do it again.”
It was a beautiful sentiment. It was also an honest one because she chose a word many Americans spend their lives trying to avoid.
Imperfect.
America loves its victories. It is less comfortable with its mistakes.
A few days ago, I heard someone tell a story that began the way old New Yorker essays begin. Not with a grand declaration, but with an observation.
He said that if America were a prizefighter, it would be the kind who gets knocked flat on the canvas, wakes up under the sting of smelling salts, looks around at the crowd and asks a simple question.
“What happened?”
The answer is complicated.
What happened is that before there was an America, there were people already here.
What happened is that a nation founded on liberty tolerated slavery.
What happened is that Thomas Jefferson wrote some of the most beautiful words ever committed to paper about freedom while human beings remained in bondage at Monticello.
What happened is that Frederick Douglass spent his life asking Americans whether they intended to honor the promises they made to themselves.
What happened is that formerly enslaved people were told they would receive 40 acres and a mule, only to watch that promise disappear almost as quickly as it was made.
What happened is that generation after generation learned to celebrate the Declaration of Independence without always examining the distance between the declaration and the reality.
The United States has never really been the United States of Perfection.
It has always been the United States of Mistakes.
That is not an insult.
It may be the most patriotic observation one can make.
Because nations are not judged by whether they make mistakes. Every nation does. They are judged by whether they possess the courage to confront them.
The American habit has often been something else. We polish the marble. We recite the speeches. We elevate the founders to near-mythical status. We tell ourselves stories that are easier to repeat than to investigate.
Then someone mentions Jefferson’s slaves.
Someone mentions Indigenous nations.
Someone mentions Jim Crow.
Someone mentions redlining.
Someone mentions the vanished promise of land and economic independence.
And suddenly the room becomes uncomfortable.
Not because the facts are disputed.
Because the facts interrupt the mythology.
The opening of the Obama Presidential Center sits inside that tension.
The center occupies 19 acres. During a conversation about the project, someone observed that 19 acres falls just short of 40. There is no mule, either. The remark drew a laugh, but beneath the humor sat an old wound. The distance between 19 and 40 may be measured in acres, but the distance between a promise and its fulfillment can stretch across centuries.
That is why the center matters beyond architecture, tourism or presidential legacy.
It stands as evidence of two truths existing simultaneously.
The first is that extraordinary progress has occurred. The descendants of enslaved people have become mayors, governors, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, business leaders, cultural icons and presidents.
The second is that progress is not completion.
Douglass understood that.
Baldwin understood it.
Martin Luther King Jr. understood it.
And Michelle Obama appeared to understand it when she called the center an example of what this imperfect democracy has both “strived for and achieved.”
Notice the balance.
Strived for.
Achieved.
Not perfected.
Not completed.
Not finished.
Americans often argue about which version of the country is real. The inspiring one or the disappointing one.
The answer is both.
America is Jefferson and Douglass.
It is Independence Hall and the auction block.
It is emancipation and segregation.
It is Selma and the Voting Rights Act.
It is Barack Obama and the backlash that followed Barack Obama.
The country has always been a contradiction trying to become a nation.
The greatest danger is not that Americans acknowledge those contradictions.
The greatest danger is that they stop acknowledging them.
Because once a society convinces itself that its mistakes belong entirely to the past, it becomes incapable of recognizing the new ones being made in the present.
That is why history remains controversial.
History is a mirror.
And mirrors are useful only when people are willing to look into them.
Perhaps that is the real meaning of America’s 250th birthday.
Not a celebration of perfection.
Not a denial of failure.
Not an exercise in national self-congratulation.
A moment of smelling salts.
A chance for the country to sit up, look around, and answer the question it has been asking for generations.
What happened?
And more important still:
What happens next?
