The fact that African American patriotism is never simple doesn’t mean it’s in any way halfhearted; to the contrary, complicated relationships tend to be the deepest and strongest. It’s a historical fact that black soldiers and sailors who fought overseas in World War II came home to Southern cities where they had to ride in the back of the bus — and that they were angry that the nation for which they had sacrificed would treat them this way. To some whites, I guess, it may seem logical to be suspicious of black patriotism — to believe that anger must somehow temper love of country. It doesn’t, of course. It never has. Black Americans are just more intimately and acutely aware of some of our nation’s flaws than many white Americans might be. This generalization is less true of my sons than of my parents, and I hope that someday it won’t be true at all. But only in the past half-century has the United States begun to fully extend the rights of citizenship to African Americans — and only in the past year has the idea that a black man might actually be elected president been more than a plot device for movies and television shows. We’re someplace we’ve never been.