The Soldier’s Burden

Which America Have I Fought For?**

“Here, the thing itself—the sacred right of liberty—is the cause for which we fight.”

— Richard Allen, Revolutionary-era Black patriot

There is a moment—subtle in its delivery, devastating in its implications—buried within Ken Burns’ The American Revolution that struck me not just as an observer of history, but as someone shaped by service.

As a soldier of thirty-three years’ active duty, a combat veteran, a combat-disabled veteran, and a Black American soldier, I felt something inside me shift.

Somewhere between the chronicles of “liberty or slavery,” the petitions, the uprising, and the declarations of a people who refused to be “made slaves,” I realized a truth I had long sensed but never fully named:

We may all have worn the same uniform, but we have not always been fighting for/towards the same America.

I. The Soldiers’ Oath and the Soldiers’ Dream

“We have served our country faithfully, but our country has not served us.”

— Petition of Black Revolutionary Soldiers, Massachusetts, 1777

Every soldier begins with the oath—not to a crown, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States. It is the most American ritual we have: a pledge not to a person, but to an idea.

But what does that idea mean to different Americans?

Burns’ documentary forced me to face an uncomfortable clarity: White Americans and Black Americans inherit different versions of 1776, and therefore different visions of what their service defends.

For many white soldiers, the oath affirms a country that already reflects who they are.

For Black soldiers, the oath is an act of faith in a country that might become what it claims to be.

And while I write here of the Black soldiers’ experience, I do so knowing that it stands as a proxy—an emblem—for every American whose service and sacrifice have been rendered in the shadows of exclusion. Our story is particular, but its echoes belong to all who have borne the weight of defending a nation that did not yet fully defend them.

II. Which America Are You Fighting For?

“We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.”

— W.E.B. Du Bois, 1919

In the mud, the cold, the smoke, and the noise, soldiers are united by mission.

But missions end. Wars end.

Then comes the reckoning.

The question that detonated inside me while watching Burns’ documentary was this:

Had I spent my entire service fighting for an America that did not yet fight for me?

This is not bitterness.

It is inheritance.

Black soldiers have always fought for the idea of America more than its reality.

White (male) soldiers, more often, fight to preserve the America they already recognize.

Same flag.

Same ranks.

Same sacrifice.

Different Americas.

III. The Loneliness of the Black Soldier

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

— James Baldwin

There is a solitude that inhabits the Black soldiers’ journey—a quiet, unspoken isolation.

It is the knowledge that your competence is sometimes doubted before it is witnessed.

It is the sense that your patriotism must be performed rather than presumed.

It is the understanding that your uniform may strip you of race, but your country never does.

It is, as Du Bois described, ‘double consciousness’ in camouflage—being asked to defend a nation that often questions your belonging in it.

And yet, it is also a fierce, hopeful loyalty: our fight is for a future America, not the one we inherited.

IV. The New “Liberty or Slavery” Debate in Anti-DEI America

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

— Audre Lorde

Enter the second Trump administration, whose anti-DEI crusade is not merely a policy regimen but an ideological one.

It is framed as restoring merit, unity, and cohesion. But for soldiers of color, it delivers a stark and chilling message:

Your inclusion was never structural.

It was conditional.

This dismantling of DEI efforts is nothing less than the modern echo of the Founders’ blind spots—

a reminder that some Americans are welcomed into the military as warriors,

but not always as equal stakeholders in the meaning of the nation they defend.

The Revolutionary elites cried “liberty, else slavery” …. while owning human beings.

The modern anti-DEI movement proclaims “unity and standards” while dismantling the structures that made military equality possible.

Different century.

Same architecture of exclusion.

V. Reconciling the Soldiers’ Oath With the Nation’s Contradiction

“Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”

— Adlai Stevenson

So what does a Black soldier do with this truth?

They tell it.

Because what I have come to believe is that I never served the America that was.

I served the America that must be(come).

My oath was to the Constitution’s promise, not its failures.

To liberty as universal, not selective.

To equality as real, not rhetorical.

The Founders proclaimed liberty while denying it to others.

The Black soldiers’ oath is, paradoxically, the ‘more American’ oath—the vow to make this nation live up to the words it engraved in its founding documents.

VI. The Soldiers’ Answer to Burns’ Revelation

“I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize.”

— Langston Hughes

Burns’ documentary gave me a revelation painful in its clarity but powerful in its truth:

Yes, we may have been fighting for different Americas.

But only one of those Americas holds the possibility of justice.

Only one America welcomes all into its circle of belonging.

Only one America sees liberty as universal rather than selective.

Only one America is willing to confront its past honestly to build a future worthy of its ideals.

That is the America I fought for.

It is the America I still fight for.

The America that must come.

Coda

“We have to make America what America must become.”

— James Baldwin

Essay I traced how liberty unified but never united the Revolution.

Essay II exposed how liberty rested on a foundation of racial exclusion.

Essay III brings the question home:

What does it mean to serve a nation still struggling to become itself?

For the Black soldier—and for all those serving from the margins—the answer is both burden and calling:

We are not merely soldiers of the United States.

We are soldiers of its unfinished promise.

And that, finally, is an America worthy of our service.

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