"Real Americans" don't need to know their civics

Recently I was sitting at a bus stop, mulling in my usual vexed way about how Metro had once again decided to trim its budget at my expense by skipping a scheduled bus. In an attempt to keep my mind off this issue, I pulled out my notebook computer and began doing some word-doodling. After a time I observed that I had company; it was an “older” male, although in this case a relative term, since my hair—still mostly dark—causes people mistake my age. My immediate impression was that he was one those insufferable “patriotic,” Anglo-Saxon-Nordic, “real” American types who are never at a loss to tell you are not, especially if you look “ethnic.”  

He didn’t “disappoint” my initial impression. If I had simply been some miserable “other” who didn’t make waves other than merely taking up space, he wouldn’t feel it necessary to use up any effort to put his feathers on display.  But no; since I wasn’t apparently a gang-type who might put him in his place, he decided that it was safe to determine that I didn’t know my “place” and he could show me where that “was.” He puffily informed me he was going sit down there, without regard to my activity. Since he was “wide” and the seat Metro provided was paltry, that meant that in order to comply to this order, I had to vacate and desist my work, and he knew it and that was his intention to do. 

I removed myself from the seat, because I sensed that if I didn’t comply he would try to shove me off the seat, and I didn’t want to get that close to him. However, I told him that I was aware of his intent, his feeling “entitled” to seat for reasons of social distinction. He replied that he been in the military for 21 years, as if this was supposed to confirm his sense of “entitlement.” He asked me how long I was in the military, in a manner that assumed that I was never in the military. I informed him that I was in the Army for seven years, but to underscore the point I wished to make, I told him that what mattered was  that I thought he was just behaving like any person who believed that being “American” and deserving of its “privileges” meant that you had to be 100 percent white.  I also told him people like him didn’t believe in what this country stood for, or chose to hoard it all for themselves. He asked me what that was, and I told him that everyone in this country was entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and it was my experience many people didn’t actually believe this.

Now, there are surveys that suggest that a majority of native-born U.S. citizens could not pass the civics portion of the naturalization test given to immigrants (the other half of the test is English comprehension, which could indicate a problem with our education system if they flunked that too). I’m native-born, but this individual decided to “quiz” me on my civics learning.   He asked me where I had read that line, and I told him that it was in the Declaration of Independence. No it is not, he exclaimed triumphantly, asserting confidently that it was in the Ninth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. I told him he was daft, and there wasn’t even any such line in the entire Constitution. But he asserted that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that it was in the Ninth Amendment. I again told him he was wrong, and he decided to check his “smart” phone's web access to prove he was right. I don’t think he found what he was looking for, because after that he shut-up like a clam.

For the record, the following is found in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Of course there are some people (neo-Nazis, the Heritage Foundation) who still insist that this only applies to white folks, but the 14^th Amendment was supposed to remedy this “oversight.” The Ninth Amendment, on the other hand, says something quite different:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

As you can see, there isn’t even the slightest similarity in the prose. There is some debate about what exactly this rather vague amendment actually means, but it seems to most scholars that it has something to do with “rights” not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, particularly in regard to privacy issues.

So it seems that being white and having fourteen more years of military service didn’t make this individual more “American” than I was. But I have no illusions about the world I live in.