4th of July

I am a black man living in the United States of America. You know I hardly ever use the race card, but in this case it is , very much relevant, so I mention it. On July 4th in 1776 a fledgling nation professed its independence in a bombastic declaration. While John Hancock was affixing his “John Hancock” to one of the most famous documents the world has ever known, a document that freed many people from oppressive rule, my ancestors were still suffering under a different kind of oppressive rule. So, how do I feel about Independence Day?

I love it (and not just because I was a bicentennial baby).

Too often I hear black people talking about how July 4th should be nothing to us, that the Emancipation Proclamation signed nearly 90 years later is the true document we should base our independence upon, and nothing else, that Frederick Douglas’s speech, “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July” should be our war cry. But how does any of that truly address what’s really important about the fourth of July to an American?

It doesn’t.

All it does is stirs up dissent where there should be none. Our founding fathers did everything in their power to create a nation where everyone could have freedom — freedom of religion, freedom from oppression, and freedom to think and say what we want. As Americans. Was it perfect? Not a chance. But what first drafts are? Did it take into account the slave population? No way. But if we put ourselves in their shoes we can understand why. They fought hard for what they believed in, and they didn’t even think about the slaves at the time. That’s because slaves to them weren’t people. They didn’t know any better.

While the Europeans were taught that the Indians were savages, they were also taught that Africans were inferior to them, that they were only useful as slave labor, that they were in essence property, to be bought and sold like a table or some chairs. I think about my childhood growing up in a Seventh-Day Adventist household and all the things I was taught, things I took to be the god’s honest truth with no questions. But when I got older I began to question. And just like I began to question, so did many people in the new nation.

Abolitionism was born out of these questions, and in the process the nation was educated on what was truly right and wrong, on who should be considered people with certain inalienable rights, that among those being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But think about this: if the nation was never free, if there had never been a July 4th, or a revolution, might there still be slaves today in these colonies?

So I am grateful that at least Independence Day allowed a fledgling nation the chance to break free from oppressive rule, to understand not then but down the line that it needed to gain a peripheral viewpoint instead of just one that was head-on. It opened up the possible conversation, and that’s enough for me. I gladly celebrate it, even if I’m in the house writing this post instead of outside watching fireworks at the moment.

Sam