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On
this
Fourth
of July, a day of independence for some but not for Black people,
there is no better time to reflect on Frederick
Douglass’
speech, “What
to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Delivered
in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, on the 76th anniversary of
the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the preeminent
abolitionist, statesman, writer and orator took the opportunity not
to celebrate America, but to remind everyone that this nation is not
a place where Black folks are free.
“This
Fourth of July is yours,
not mine.
You may rejoice, I must mourn,” Douglass said, then asking the
audience, “Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to
speak today?”
Cutting
like a knife nearly 170 years ago, Douglass’ words are just as
relevant and resonating to what Black people are experiencing today.
After commemorating Juneteenth just a few weeks ago, and as America
celebrates the independence of white colonists from an oppressive
British monarchy, an oppressed Black America must always remind white
America that it has nothing to celebrate on July 4 each year. Given
the centuries-long history of persecution against Black people - much
of which still permeates society in the twenty-first century - there
is no way we can take pride in American freedom. This, as we fight
for our freedom at this very moment, as we speak, in the so-called
land of the free.
Back
then, as now, America is faced with two narratives: The myth of
American exceptionalism - that America is a great nation, the best
place and can do no wrong - versus the reality that African people
have been held in bondage in what we have been told is the cradle of
liberty. Douglass called out America for being two-faced.
“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,”
Douglass said.
“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 thanksgivings, 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,” he added.
“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.”
We
should go back to Africa if we don’t like it here, we are told
- our people built both lands - with no mention of the circumstances
that brought us here in the first place. From the first slave ship to
cross the Middle Passage, our story has been one of a 400-year
protest to get free. Meanwhile, from day one, white America has
fought and continues to fight against our freedom, fearing that when
we are fully and truly free, Black folks will pay back the favor and
get even - for our abduction, for that perilous and deadly boat ride
to the forced labor camps and everything that has happened since.
In
a
never-aired ABC interview
from 1979 that was too much for white people to handle, James
Baldwin
laid it all out, echoing Douglass.
“White
people go around, it seems to me, with a very carefully suppressed
terror of Black people, tremendous uneasiness. They don’t know
what the blackface hides,” he noted. “They’re sure
it’s hiding something. What it’s hiding is American
history, you know. What it’s hiding is what white people know
they have done and are doing.”
“White
people know very well one thing. It’s the only thing they have
to know. They know this, everything else they say is a lie,”
Baldwin continued. “They know they would not like to be Black
here. They know that. Now they know that, and they’re telling
me lies. They’re telling me and my children nothing but lies.”
In
a nation in denial over systemic racism, freedom is elusive for the
descendants of the enslaved.
Black
people need reparations for centuries of intergenerational trauma,
forced labor, theft and torture. Police continue to torture and
murder Black bodies, unable to separate from their slave patrol
origins. Whether Black people should have equal voting rights is a
question open for debate, as Republicans enact Jim Crow voter
suppression laws in state legislatures, and Democrats seek
bipartisanship with white supremacists on the federal level.
Congress
just voted to remove statues
of Confederate domestic terrorists
from the U.S. Capitol, over a century-and-a-half after the end of the
Civil War. And yet, there is little-to-no accountability for the
white insurrectionists who planned, funded and executed the Jan. 6
attack on the Capitol. This, as the skeletons of Black children and
adults lynched in the Tulsa
Race Massacre
are unearthed after a century in unmarked mass graves. And white
nationalist politicians gaslight us with laws prohibiting the
teaching of systemic racism, slavery and anything that makes America
look bad, makes white people feel uncomfortable and causes the
shedding of white tears. Juneteenth is a federal holiday, but
teaching Juneteenth, or Tulsa, or Black Lives Matter is forbidden in
school. None of this is meant to make sense.
Douglass
condemned the Founding Fathers for making “the right to hold
and to hunt slaves” a part of the Constitution and attacked the
American church for upholding slavery and siding with the oppressor.
He understood the “right of the hunter to his prey”
reigned supreme in America, and the “hideous monster” of
slavery had to be destroyed.
“The
existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a
sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a
lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your
politicians at home … It is the antagonistic force in your
government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your
Union,” Douglass said, warning “a horrible creature is
nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic.”
Even
today, the nation has not eradicated Black oppression. We experience
inequity and injustice everywhere. And the greatest threat to the
United States is white supremacist domestic terror. Nothing to
celebrate here.
“I
am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your
high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.
The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in
common,” Douglass proclaimed. “The rich inheritance of
justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your
fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life
and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.”
This
commentary was originally published by The
Grio
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