It was one of dozens of swing tunes written to stir the populace into acts of patriotism; they were doing their bit for the war effort.

About 18 months later, across the pond, the world was given another view of just how Uncle Sam felt about Harlem on parade. In the village of Bamber Bridge, several soldiers of the 1511 Quartermaster Turck—a Negro unit with white officers—got into a scuffle with white MPs at Ye Olde Hob Inn pub. When it was over one Negro soldier was dead, 7 soldiers were injured, and 32 were convicted of various military crimes. It became known—when it was known at all—as the Battle of Bamber Bridge.

Like most racial conflicts, the Battle of Bamber Bridge had several contributing causes, each varying in importance according to who is telling the story. Part of it had to do with the Detroit Race Riots, which had torn that city apart just a few days earlier. Another part had to do with the white American soldiers attempting to import US segregation policies into an English village, who—according to some British sources—liked the Negro soldiers better than the white ones anyway. (When the MPs attempted to impose segregation in the pubs, the pubs responded by posting “Black Only” signs.) Another contributing factor was that the Army seemed to use the Negro divisions as dumping grounds for the most inept of the white officers.

Whatever the cause, the Battle of Bamber Bridge ended with white US Army troops firing on Black US Army troops and the Black troops firing back.

This is, at least in my opinion, our history in microcosm. We applauded other racial groups when it served our purposes, and we made a lot of noise about it. When it didn’t serve our purposes, we continued to betray the idea on which we base the Fourth of July. And we’ve been doing it since long before 1776.

When the Harlem soldiers came home after World War II, they found that many of the rights afforded through the GI Bill were not available to them. While white soldiers bought homes under the GI Bill, Black soldiers tried and mostly failed. Loans weren’t being made for properties in “undesirable neighborhoods,” and the definition of “undesirable neighborhood” was where Black people lived. While white veterans went to college in droves under the GI Bill, Black veterans were mostly refused, steered toward vocational programs—where much of the necessary equipment was reserved for whites—or limited to Black colleges and universities, which didn’t have the capacity to take them.

All of this left Black families in the slow lane toward the American dream. Something that didn’t seem to bother a lot of people in the 1950s, at least people who looked like me.

I was taught a sanitized version of the Civil War, much of which is still making the rounds. I was, when I was 10 or 11 years old, taught about the Indian removal and didn’t wonder how something called the “Trail of Tears” could be presented so dispassionately, especially since thousands died on the 900-mile trek. I never heard of the massacres in Florida or Oklahoma nor the periodic resurrections of the KKK. I was shown pictures of the Chinese building the Transcontinental Railroad, but our instruction somehow missed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

We wanted the Indians’ lands, so we took them. We needed the Negroes bodies, so we used them. We grew economically on the backs of a dozen or more immigrant groups. And we held ourselves up to the world as the Beacon of Democracy.

Senator Ted Cruz, a reportedly intelligent person who says incredibly stupid things, said last week that “the Left hates America.” Many of his political stripe are up in arms about teaching Critical Race Theory in elementary school. They have erected one straw man after another without facing the real problem: that we have never lived up to our promise: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Were I given the opportunity to respond to Senator Cruz (and were I able to contain my disgust for him), I would tell him that I, a proud member of the Left, do not hate America. I’ve seen it do great things that made me proud. We have been leaders in many important ways. However, the United States we live in—as it has since its founding—has fallen short. It’s much like the note the teacher put on my homework in grade school: Charles is not doing his best work. My parents chose not to ignore that note, and I think I’m a better person for it. I think we need to take the same attitude: to be proud of that which is prideworthy and work hard to correct that which isn't. And we have a lot to do.

To Senator Cruz, I would say that what I hate is the system that reserves its benefits for a select group of people and forcefully suppresses others. I hate a system that ignores our flaws and makes no effort to correct them. And I hate politics based on gullibility and lies.

I do not hate America. I love the promise of it. It has been very good to me and my family. I just want it to be that way for everybody else, according to their efforts and abilities.