Will We Still Do July 4 Next Year?
Grill them while you’ve got them.
This Fourth of July this year has me feeling like the opening of Malcolm X (watch above). The white majority might soon burn American democracy entirely rather than endure a multicultural one. However, as Brother Malcolm often observed, a nation that actively oppresses the marginalized is not truly free, yet we continue to celebrate the illusion. We’ll probably do so even if Donald Trump returns to the White House. Americans, even liberals, crave normality.
Adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4 did not immediately free the American colonists from British rule. The Revolutionary War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, with terms "exceedingly generous" to the former colonies, on September 3, 1783. That’s still grilling season but it’s a little too close to Labor Day. It’s very American to celebrate the day independence was simply declared with fancy, hypocritical words than when it was actually won.
If just saying you’re free made you free in more than the existential sense, then I'd personally celebrate the day in September 1848 when Frederick Douglass published an open letter in his newspaper, The North Star, reading for filth the enslaver who’d previously held him in bondage. It’s far more personal than Thomas Jefferson’s beef with the British.
I have selected this day on which to address you, because it is the anniversary of my emancipation; and knowing no better way, I am led to this as the best mode of celebrating that truly important events. Just ten years ago this beautiful September morning, yon bright sun beheld me a slave—a poor degraded chattel—trembling at the sound of your voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute. The hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to heave with the heavy contest between hope and fear. I have no words to describe to you the deep agony of soul which I experienced on that never-to-be-forgotten morning—for I left by daylight. I was making a leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far as I could by reason determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking. The preliminaries and precautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. I was like one going to war without weapons—ten chances of defeat to one of victory. One in whom I had confided, and one who had promised me assistance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me, thus leaving the responsibility of success or failure solely with myself. You, sir, can never know my feelings. As I look back to them, I can scarcely realize that I have passed through a scene so trying.
Four years later, Douglass dismissed the Fourth of July holiday with justified bitterness at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “This Fourth of July is yours , not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn ... Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today." Ye Olde Fox News probably attacked Douglass as a spoiled elitist who wasn't suitably grateful to America, which had given him the opportunity to escape slavery and become famous.
Black Americans have for generations celebrated our own, actual Independence Day — June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved people were “freed." Juneteenth is finally a federal holiday, so maybe I should let everyone else celebrate the Fourth of July in peace. But the Revolutionary War lasted only seven years and the British mostly left America alone, with a few notable exceptions such as the War of 1812 and the 1960s British Invasion. Black people’s war for our freedom will never end so long as we live and breathe in America.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
You might recall the brief moment during the summer of 2020 when a true “racial reckoning” seemed possible. We dreamed too big and spoke too loudly, and keeping with a historical pattern, the white backlash was severe. Our supposed political allies swiftly returned to their kneeling positions before the police and retreated from any reforms. Corporations that once boldly embraced DEI initiatives have now meekly abandoned them. The struggle continues, especially on this Fourth of July.
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This is such a deep article. I am often conflicted about patriotism, and I at least enjoy the day off I guess. For what it's worth, I hope for you to have as great a holiday as possible given the circumstances.
The internet and Information Age was supposed to give us a compendium of human knowledge at our fingertips. We were told that it was supposed to usher in a new age of reason and understanding and acceptance. But we squandered it. We refused to learn from the lessons history taught us and the past mistakes we made. We refuse to learn from the voices of the people who were there and the experts who studied them. But most importantly we refuse to listen to each other, still.
Instead of making it easier to discern truth from fiction we made it easier to spread lies.
I do believe in the goodness of people and I do believe in the goodness that America can be. But I am not naive about its dark history or the dark path it’s potentially headed towards.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in November but in my humble opinion our biggest obstacle we are facing right now is propaganda and misinformation. And most people don’t even know that’s what’s being forced upon us.