SUSI, Independence Day, and the America that Isn’t (Yet)
Jerold Jacobs
There is an idea of a United States of America that lives up to the fairytale ideals that American schoolchildren are taught. Lyndon Johnson called it the Great Society. William Penn called it the Holy Experiment. I call it the Ideal America. I imagine the ideal America would be not only tolerant of its own diversity, but appreciative, and nurturing of it. This ideal America would return to global leadership, not with a continued reliance on the threat of military violence, but with countless hands extended to nations across the globe. Most of all, this America would offer its hospitality to foreigners, in hopes that many of them would choose to stay. This nebulous idea springs from the platitude I most latched onto as a child about the United States, that it was a place where “everyone was welcome, and everyone could do as they pleased.” You can imagine my shock at slowly learning how untrue that idea was. Perhaps my idea of it is different from the one others imagined, after all, none of us have ever lived in it. There are rare moments, though, where I glimpse the feeling of living in such a place, in such a time, that lives up to the idea of America in my head. The fourth of July, 2019 was one of those moments.
I wasn’t originally supposed to press-gang my family into hosting a group of twenty-four students at our suburban Pennsylvania home for the fourth of July. Unfortunately, the original host for the SUSI fourth of July event had to cancel, and none of the options brought forth around the meeting table seemed to me like they would give a representative fourth of July experience, a real cultural showcase of how Americans celebrate our country. Without much thought, I raised my hand and suggested
“Why don’t we just bring the students out of the city to West Chester by train and have a cookout at my parent’s house?” Immediately, I almost regretted saying my idea out loud. Could we cook enough food for so many people? How would we get the students from the train station to the house? Fortunately, most of these details were divided up between other staff members, leaving me with just a pair of problems to solve. All I would have to do was buy barbecue supplies and prepare my family.
I had some concerns about finding Halal meat to serve at the barbecue. A vegetarian meal for the students, a majority of whom ate halal, simply wouldn’t do for the fourth of July. Troublingly though, my parents live just off the Mainline in Pennsylvania, which is the whitest, wealthiest, and most protestant part of the state, and possibly the world. I did eventually find halal beef in a tucked-away nook of my local Shop-Rite, so at least my hastily put together cookout would have burgers.
My parents were immediately excited to be hosting a cookout and to be supporting the Dialogue Institute, but a greater potential problem was my two dogs. Some students were apprehensive about going to a house with two dogs. This seemed at first absurd to me, my dogs are miniature poodles, less than fifteen pounds each, and while they are excitable, they couldn’t hurt anyone if they tried. After talking with some of the students who felt that fear of dogs, we came to a mutual understanding. I understood that this was a real, deep-seated fear for them, and they understood that I promised to do my best to keep the dogs away from them. I also further explained that even if the dogs got near to them, it would be for a playful lick or a sniff, not a bite.
When the students and SUSI staff did all arrive at my Parent’s house in the Pennsylvanian suburbia, everyone gathered in the backyard initially for introductions to my family (and the dogs) which went over as smoothly as I could have hoped, with only a few moments of fear as an overenthusiastic fuzzball tried to jump on everyone he could meet. I was pleased to see more and more students who were fearful of the dogs before offering a tentative hand to sniff or even sharing a spot with them in the sun. As the afternoon continued, we divided everyone up by gender, to allow the men and women to have a turn swimming in the pool in turn. It felt just a little strange for me to be separating my guests by gender, but in hospitality, the comfort of the guests comes before the host.
Despite all the work, the fourth of July 2019 was the only time in recent memory I felt I was fully celebrating the holiday without apprehension or a sense of hypocrisy. Independence Day celebrations often feel blindly jingoistic to me, a day when everyone ignores the countless social issues that the US grapples with to rally around some skin-deep concept of freedom. Especially since the election of President Trump, the U.S.’s issues with race, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism have been laid painfully bare. There are days when I feel genuine shame for being a citizen of a country that allows these things to happen. Reminders of the nation’s issues, of how many people would rather the USA be a white Christian man’s country only, are more frequent than the reminders of the ideal America that could be. On the fourth of July 2019 though, SUSI put a glimpse of the ideal America right in front of me. Visitors from other nations and cultures, enjoying an American tradition right in my own backyard. To imagine such a free and joyful cultural exchange as an everyday occurrence in my country stirs my soul. I don’t know if it’s a possibility within my lifetime, but the ideal America is one worth working towards.
