Can one be Patriotic and a white ally?

So Delma raises some very thoughtful and interesting points about patriotism and people of color. In some sense I have always envied people of color because they did have a reason to not be patriotic. But me? Well, i'm white and was raised in a suburb--the pinnacle of the (white) American Dream. I am supposed to be patriotic. Really patriotic in fact. But i'm not. I remember hearing about Rev. Wright's sermons and wanting to shout my own "Yes!" and then looking around the room while everyone stared at me in disbelief. So why I am not patriotic?

I grew up learning the same stories about Columbus, Thanksgiving, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, etc. My sons today are also learning them. We were taught (as pointed out in Lies My Teacher Told Me) that whites built this country and were always good. I never heard anything that Columbus did was wrong. After all, we have a national holiday about him. But it was at the exclusion of his humanness, that is, both positive and negative choices he made, that racism was built into our cultural story. To make him, and all the rest, hereos--godlike--only puts us in a pickle when we look at our history. For now, we can't look back on history and learn from it, we have to look back on history and justify it. Now we get defensive about comments like those of Rev. Wright's.
We as white people need to actually study and listen to the experience's of those around us.

Indeed, today when anyone points out the oppression and suffering of marginalized people (both past and present), which are disproportionately people of color (think Darfur, Palestine, Americans in poverty, the middle East, etc) it is met with either dismissiveness or indifference. Which puts people like me in another pickle. How can I defend, love, even sacrifice for--a country that does not even recognize its own atrocities? Without recognition we cannot change anything!

So can i be proud to be an American as a white ally? Only if destroying racism becomes our next priority. Imagine what our future will be when we learn from our past.
Peace
Joyce McCauley-Benner