Loving America Means Knowing America

I love my country, although it is far from perfect. In this special edition of Leading with Clarity, I’d like to explain what this means to me.

It’s impossible to truly love something—or someone—without first seeing it clearly. And seeing this country clearly means acknowledging our greatest wrongs. The story of the United States is not just a story of ideals and progress, but also of deep injustices:

• The genocide of Native Americans claimed countless lives and cultures, including the forced relocation of tens of thousands on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, where an estimated 4,000 Cherokee people died.
• The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited Chinese immigration and set the stage for broader anti-Asian discrimination.
• Centuries of slavery brutalized millions of African people and their descendants, and the harm did not end with emancipation in 1865.
• After the Civil War, the Jim Crow era enforced racial segregation and terror through lynching and disenfranchisement.
• Women were denied the right to vote until 1920 and faced legal barriers to education, property ownership, and participation in public life.
• In the early 20th century, over 60,000 Americans—many of them poor, disabled, or women of color—were forcibly sterilized because they were deemed “unfit.”
• During World War II, the government interned more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, while also turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.
• LGBTQ+ communities were criminalized and persecuted throughout much of the 20th century, exemplified by the police raid on the Stonewall Inn in 1969.
• Hispanic Americans endured discrimination and mass deportations, including the so-called “Mexican Repatriation” in the 1930s, when as many as a million people were forcibly removed—many of them U.S. citizens.
• The Immigration Act of 1924 sharply limited immigration from Asia, Eastern Europe, and other regions, institutionalizing xenophobia.
• Muslim Americans, Sikh Americans, and others have been subjected to hate crimes, profiling, and suspicion—especially after the September 11 attacks.
• People with disabilities were institutionalized and denied education and community living for much of modern history, leading to systemic segregation.
• In recent years, a surge in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic targeted Asian American communities.
• The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others have highlighted enduring police brutality and systemic racism.
• Ongoing efforts to restrict voting access have disproportionately affected Black, Latino, Native American, and disabled voters.
• Transgender Americans have faced attempts to roll back protections in health care, military service, and public life.

And yet, in the face of these injustices, some of the most marginalized among us stood up for this country with courage and conviction:

• Navajo Code Talkers used their language to secure U.S. military communications and help turn the tide of World War II in the Pacific.
• The Tuskegee Airmen flew over 15,000 combat sorties in Europe while confronting racism at home and in their own ranks.
• Fred Korematsu resisted internment and later helped overturn the injustice in the courts.
• Patsy Mink, the first woman of color elected to Congress, co-authored Title IX, opening doors to education and sports for millions of girls and women.
• Dalip Singh Saund, the first Asian American elected to Congress, fought for immigration reform and civil rights.
• Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta organized farmworkers to demand fair wages and dignity in the fields.
• Harvey Milk became one of the first openly gay elected officials and inspired a generation to demand equality.
• Judith Heumann survived polio, used a wheelchair, and became a pioneering leader in the disability rights movement that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm in arm with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma for voting rights.
• Sylvia Rivera, a trans Latina activist, fought tirelessly for LGBTQ+ and homeless communities.
• Khizr Khan, a Muslim American father who lost his son in Iraq, stood before the country to defend the Constitution.
• In the last decade, countless health care workers—many immigrants and people of color—risked their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic to care for their communities.
• Black Lives Matter organizers led one of the largest protest movements in American history to demand accountability and racial justice.
• Transgender service members and advocates fought successfully to end the military ban on open transgender service.

Why did these Americans love a nation that so often failed to love them back?

For the same reason I do: because despite our shortcomings, we have a shared vision—values, however imperfectly implemented, of equal rights, fairness, and the potential for greatness.

We can point to moments when those values triumphed:

• The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all are created equal.
• The Emancipation Proclamation struck at the heart of slavery.
• The 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discrimination and secured democracy for millions.
• The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 established protections and equal access for people with disabilities.
• The Refugee Act of 1980 opened doors for families fleeing war and persecution.
• The Affordable Care Act expanded health coverage to millions, including people with preexisting conditions.
• In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court declared that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, laying the groundwork for the civil rights movement.
• In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court recognized that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry under the Constitution.
• The 2022 bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act protected marriage equality for same-sex and interracial couples in federal law.
• In countless acts of citizenship, protest, and service, Americans have worked to bring our founding ideals closer to reality.

As we celebrate Independence Day, I believe patriotism requires honesty as well as pride. We can love America not because it has always been just, but because it has always contained the possibility of justice—and because so many have fought to make that possibility real.

This July Fourth, I honor both the struggle and the hope that define our story.

Happy Independence Day.

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Further Reading

If you’d like to learn more about these histories, here are some excellent books:

• Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Yale University Press, 2023.
• Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Anchor, 2008.
• Cohen, Adam. Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. Penguin Press, 2016.
• Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton University Press, 2004.
• Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. Basic Books, 1994.