Mark McCormick: Others have standing, too

Park board meetings don’t typically inspire poetry. But listening to Herb Duncan last week, following the board’s decision to delay replacing a Confederate battle flag removed in July from Veterans Memorial Park, awakened memories of Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America.”

Duncan, a retired Vietnam War Navy veteran, intimated that only veterans had standing in this discussion, but others do, too.

True, a group of us, assembled by the Wichita city manager, have discussed what to do at Veterans Memorial Park, and, yes, a group of veterans act as the memorial’s caretakers.

But Duncan’s post-meeting comments focused only on honoring Confederate veterans. What about his African-American veteran brothers? Why no concern about how the flag dishonors them?

What about the rest of us Kansans? Isn’t that flag’s presence particularly galling given Bleeding Kansas’ role in ending slavery? What about citizens who saw it waving between them and voter registration, at newly desegregated schools and in newly integrated neighborhoods?

Don’t they, too, sing America?

After Duncan addressed reporters, John Stevens spoke eloquently about how incendiary the flag had become and his fears of another South Carolina-style mass murder.

Stevens has standing. The flag pavilion bears his father’s name. His dad, our former mayor, cut the ribbon at the current City Hall. Stevens said he once asked his father, who was Lebanese, why a neighbor didn’t like them. His father said that here, “You’re either American, or you’re nothing.”

The late Phil Blake, the man most readily associated with local veteran memorials, liked to remind patriots that they couldn’t love this country “without loving everyone in it.”

This debate isn’t only about veterans. It’s about our country, and everyone in it.

Once we acknowledge that, society will embody the poem’s final lines:

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed –

I, too, am America.

This story was originally published September 19, 2015 at 7:03 PM with the headline "Mark McCormick: Others have standing, too."