The Pledge of Allegiance spreads conformity to a false national narrative.
Don’t rise for the pledge at college Board of Trustee meetings, Associated Students of Citrus College meetings or interclub council meetings.
The pledge is tainted with a history of oppression and red-baiting. It is anti-intellectual and the opposite of what college is for.
While only a few students have voiced objections to participating in the pledge, they stand in stark contrast to the many that participate.
ASCC student senator and presidential candidate Fernando Flores is one who stands, but won’t place his hand over his heart.
“I stood up to meet it halfway, but I don’t fully condone things that have happened in the past,” Flores said.
Flores’ small protest in the back of ASCC meetings masks the anguish he feels every time the pledge is recited. Flores is applying for enrollment in the Nez Perce tribe, whose name means “We the People.”
Flores said he is uncomfortable hailing the flag of a country that has taken part in the destruction of indigenous peoples worldwide.
“If you look at some of the things the U.S. has advocated for and you look at the history of how the U.S. has taken over or influenced other countries, by supplying them with weapons to fight out their internal fights, the country has overstepped itself in foreign policy,” Flores said.
Objecting to standing or saluting the flag is a healthy expression of dissent. The United States was not founded as a nation of followers.
The objections Flores lists to raising hand to heart are still part of U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. still sells weapons to Saudi Arabia to prosecute its war against Yemenis, many of them civilians.
“The reason why I don’t stand up fully is because of indifference to injustice throughout history,” Flores said.
When school children across the country learn the ballad, they rarely get any historical context.
The original Pledge of Allegiance was written by Civil War veteran George Balch to teach American patriotism to the large number of international students in New York City public schools in the 1860s. It proudly gives off a strong whiff of xenophobia.
“We give our heads and hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one flag!”
By 1892 Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, attempted to modify the pledge to its current form, without the phrase, “under God.”
In “The Pledge of Allegiance A Short History,” Bellamy is said to have “considered placing the word, ‘equality,’ in his Pledge, but knew that (New York) state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African-Americans.”
In the 1920s, the Daughters of the American Revolution, who as an organization would go on to oppose desegregation, added the phrase “to the flag of the United States” so immigrant children would know which flag they were supposed to salute.
When the phrase “under God” was added to the pledge in 1954 by Congress, Michigan Sen. Homer Ferguson introduced the bill by saying, “I believe this modification of the pledge is important because it highlights one of the real fundamental differences between the free world and the Communist world, namely belief in God.’’
Ferguson’s resolution passed without opposition at the height of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist inquisition, the House Un-American Activities Committee. Communists, socialists and trade-unionists were interrogated, lost their jobs and were imprisoned because of the hearings.
The U.S. has not reconciled this bitter legacy of the pledge. By exercising First Amendment rights, opposition to shows of nationalism redefine what it means to be patriotic in the United States.
At a recent campus event, Flores’ only ASCC presidential opponent, Ian Rodrigues, compared Flores’ campaign to Venezuela and Cuba and his own to the United States, implying Flores’ lack of patriotism.
“My opponent has always considered himself a revolutionary type of individual,” Rodrigues said. “Right now, revolution is fine and dandy but we don’t need a revolution. What we need is to be unified.”
Rather than encouraging critical thinking, reciting political and religious phrases conditions thoughtlessness in the impressionable mind.
People should not be encouraged to mindlessly mouth words of allegiance under any circumstance, let alone those steeped in a history of racism and fanaticism.
But the public gatherings of a college seem to be the worst forum for such a ritual. Habitual recitation turns speaking into a thoughtless reflex. This is incompatible with an educational institution’s purpose to foster critical thinking.
Shows of national pride are unnecessary every time student clubs gather to discuss a campus bake sale.
It is also callous to international students, non-monotheistic students and leftists.
A college should be a place of inclusion, where exception is embraced, not where people are ferreted out and identified by their non-participation in a pledge.
Those that say this “harmless” nationalism expresses a common citizenship should invent a new form of welcome at public gatherings.
