America has always been a mixed bag

By Joseph Price

Some Americans didn't have the "good old days."

Who knew a hat could cause so much outrage?

A couple of weeks ago, a Home Depot employee in New York found out.

Krystal Lake of Staten Island, New York, decided to wear a personalized hat stating “America was never great” to her job.
As expected, this lead to someone taking a snapshot of her in said hat and sharing it on social media. 
This eventually led her employer to disavow the hat, as well as any other politically-themed clothing or accessories that employees might be wearing. According to Home Depot, some sort of action was taken and as of now, I'm not sure of her job status.

Now, the logical conclusion is that would be the end of it. But of course, it never is.

As soon as the photos went up, there was the typical knee-jerk reaction from outraged people on Facebook, Twitter and other social media ranging from demanding her firing to, according to Lake at least, death threats.

Lake told the Staten Island Advance that she had the hat made as a reaction to Donald Trump's slogan “Make America Great Again.”

"The point of the hat was to say America needs changing and improvement," Lake told the Advance. "I don't think it's a positive message to say, "'Let's look to the past.'"

Of course, this triggered the usual knee-jerk reaction of “if you don't like it, get out” and “do you want to live in Africa instead?”

But is that reaction really the right one?

Whether something is great or not is a pretty subjective thing. This is especially true of past events.

There's a lot of things people can point to in our collective past or present and say America is great. We've had times of great economic growth and have been the world's largest economy. We've had, and still have, one of the world's strongest military forces. Despite all the fear of government surveillance and confidentiality, our press is among the freest and our privacy is largely respected. Even as far as governments go, we've still got one of the least corrupt and most transparent. Those are all things people could call “great.”

On the other hand, we need to ask if things have been “great” for people who aren't white and male.

Disclaimer: I happen to be white and male.

Now this is where a lot of people begin to get pretty defensive. A lot of people react as if looking at America through the experiences of people who had hardships because of their race or gender is somehow going to invalidate everything about the country that they've held dear. Others view it as a personal insult to those that served in the military, past and present.

But seriously, how is saying “yeah, it's been rough for black people, American Indians and women” an insult to anyone?

I often hear the statement “American blacks should be glad they're not in Africa” as a response to pretty much anyone who brings up some of the country's sordid history in regards to black people. Honestly, I find that to be an irrelevant point because black people in America are not comparing their status to Africans, they're comparing it to other Americans. After all, their collective experience has been in America, not Africa. Are we supposed to dismiss the tricky past of chattel slavery, segregation and lynchings when it comes to looking back at America's past? Is it really that offensive to ask “has America been good to black people?”

It's a similar story for Native Americans who saw themselves evicted from their lands in the Eastern states during the first half of the 1800s, then confined to ever-shrinking reservations from that point on. Not only that, but they also faced forced assimilation, which saw many of their customs and languages die out. Again, is it really out of line to ask “has America been great for American Indians?”

And finally, there is the experience for American women, who were not allowed to vote until 1920. But even after that, the law was used to keep women in the home and out of the workplace. It also made it hard for women to escape abusive men, often leaving those who sought escape little legal recourse. Child support itself was, and still is, often treated as a joke.

Of course, there are other groups of Americans that could be mentioned. They all have different experiences and all vary in levels of “greatness.”

Now of course, this is not a defense of Lake wearing the hat. She claims that her co-workers were wearing pro-Trump accessories, but I've yet to see any evidence of that. As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to Home Depot to buy nuts and bolts, not get a history lesson or be bombarded by campaign slogans.

But, I don't think the hat should spark the amount of outrage it has. Honestly, if you believe that acknowledging that some groups of people have had historically negative experiences in America is either an insult or is somehow going to destroy America, then you probably need to take a moment and breathe. Getting outraged isn't going to make your case any stronger.

Instead of being outraged, it may be more conductive to ask “why do you think that?”