Some on the left went into a frenzy over Trump’s demolition work to build a ballroom at the White House.

Not that anyone wants to see him dance more, but the angry sentiment was loud. How dare he tear down part of the precious White House, they cried.

Mind you, this is the same White House partially built with the forced labor of enslaved African people.

The same White House whose East Wing didn’t even exist until 1902, and was expanded again in 1942 by Franklin Roosevelt. The “precious history” people were defending wasn’t carved into stone tablets; it was built, rebuilt, redesigned, and remodeled repeatedly. And originally built, let’s not forget, on the backs of the very Black Americans this country still marginalizes.

But this is America. And we too often love our symbols more than we love our people.

The right is even worse.

For many conservatives, the United States flag has become less a piece of cloth and more a religious artifact. Some people show more rage over a football player kneeling quietly and peacefully during the anthem over concern about government-sponsored police brutality than they ever showed over George Floyd begging for breath. The flag becomes sacred, but Black life remains negotiable.

This is what happens when symbols become more important than the humans they’re supposed to represent.

I still love the American flag but, this type of misdirected energy is seen everywhere.

The same people furious about someone burning a flag couldn’t be bothered when the Jackson water crisis left Black families without clean drinking water. The same people who scream about “defiling monuments” didn’t blink when Mississippi refused to expand Medicaid, cutting thousands of Black residents off from basic healthcare. Thousands!

People who would chain themselves to a statue of a Confederate slavery-defending general walked past homeless veterans sleeping under highways.

Too many Americans will defend a statue of a slaveholder or a military base named after a solider for slavery more passionately than they will defend a living, breathing Black child in an underfunded school.

This obsession with symbols lets us proclaim (dare I say pretend) we’re patriotic while ignoring the suffering that makes patriotism feel hollow. It’s far easier to worship the idea of America than to confront the realities of America. It’s easier to wrap yourself in the flag than to fight for the people who live under it.

This is called patriotism-by-proxy. And it’s ruining us.

Some people even lost their mind when they caught a glimpse of Obama missing out on one salute (of thousands) but remain silent when another unarmed Black teenager is shot.

Meanwhile, the country keeps rotting under the weight of racial inequality, economic injustice, and political apathy.

America keeps polishing symbols while ignoring the rust underneath.

But the truth is simple. A society that values flags, statues, buildings, and symbols more than it values human dignity will always be a society incapable of justice. We cannot claim to love America if we don’t love Americans. Real Americans. All Americans.

The East Wing of the White House doesn’t matter as much as the families struggling to afford groceries. A flag doesn’t matter as much as the Black mothers burying their sons. A statue doesn’t matter as much as the Native communities without clean water. A national anthem doesn’t matter as much as a worker who can’t afford healthcare.

We’ve misdirected our outrage.

Imagine what this country could be if people fought as hard for racial equity as they fight for symbolic patriotism. Imagine if we had as many marches for living wages as we do for monuments. Imagine if the passion people pour into culture wars was redirected toward rebuilding communities, schools, and lives.

Maybe then the symbols we worship would actually mean something.

Until that day, we’ll keep having moments where people get angrier about a wall being torn down at the White House or someone angry at America stepping on a flag than the barriers that keep millions of Americans, especially Black Americans, from fully thriving.

America doesn’t need more symbols.

America needs more justice.

This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeffrey Kass' work on Medium.