July 6, 2020
We wake up the morning after this year’s Independence Day weekend, hungover from a hollowed out, grim echo of Independence Days past. The rapidly escalating surge of coronavirus cases in thirty-two states, including California, Texas, Arizona and Florida made barbecues and beach parties the sole province of the reckless. The rest of us were left grilling for two and suffering through amateur pyrotechnics full of sound and fury, but devoid of spectacle. The dark skies were a metaphor for our national mood.
On this July 4th, all Americans were trapped within our borders, as a result of the gross mismanagement of this pandemic by a corrupt bully. We watched with envy as Europeans opened their restaurants and cafes, while we remain unable to escape to even Canada or Mexico, (Source: “Mexico closes U.S. border in Arizona to stop July 4th visitors, citing COVID-19 fears,” by Mitchell Willetts, Fort Worth Star-Telegram News, 7/5/20). Thanks to Trump, the only thing America leads the world in is COVID-19 cases and deaths.
In 2020, we Black Americans are still being forced to defend our rights to full citizenship and convince a skeptical majority of our humanity. We still have to confront far too many white people who deputize themselves to police us on our own property. We still have to navigate an intricate array of obstacles expressly designed to prevent Black people from surviving and thriving. Even when we manage to succeed, we pay a high price for doing so, (Source: “Black families pay significantly higher property taxes than white families, new analysis shows,” by Andrew Van Dam, The Washington Post, 6/2/20 (h/t Ben Schatz)). We are the only people in America forced to underwrite our own oppression.
It would be easy, in light of our history, to give in to despair. We could click on the video of Frederick Douglass’ descendants reading his famous speech, “What, To The Slave, Is the Fourth of July,” and marvel at the fact that 168 years later, much remains the same.
On this Independence Day, we are still grappling with our foundational contradiction— that the lofty words in our Declaration were written by slaveholding Founding Fathers. We are still papering over the paradox, clinging to the mythology that we are a nation united by our ideals, where the only impediment to personal progress is an unwillingness to work hard.
These last four years have exposed that lie, as more Americans learn what Black people have always known, that every advance toward Black freedom was paid for with Black lives— from Emmet Till and four little girls in a Birmingham church, to Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Despite the silence and the violence of this Fourth of July weekend, the multiracial crowds in the street declaring that “Black Lives Matter,” the swift dismissal of racist media executives, and the demands for accountability from businesses that profit off of Black talent, offer a glimmer of hope that America may finally be willing to take the blinders off and recognize that none of us is free until all of us are free. That would truly be independence!
#Freedomisbetterthanfireworks
#VOTE