This past weekend

So did you enjoy your long holiday? What were you celebrating? The 4th of July? The Independence of a country that has oppressed your peoples for hundreds of years and continues to reap havoc on the Black family?

The 4th of July causes me to stop and think. Now those of you who know me know that I love any excuse to get together with family and friends. The 4th of July, however, celebrates the liberation of wealthy colonial slave owners from the bondage of British taxation without representation. It did absolutely NOTHING for the slaves.

In 1776, a period of monarchy, colonialism, slavery and gender inequality, it certainly was not self-evident that all persons were endowed with fundamental equality and that governments existed to serve the just interests of the people. Martin Luther King Jr. called Thomas Jefferson's document the nation's promissory note; a check that when Blacks attempted to cash, bounced. And I should say here that our country still has not acknowledged the bounced check let alone made restitution. So any celebration of the 4th also needs to be tempered with a sober reflection on our nation's sins: genocide and land theft perpetrated against Native Americans, chattel slavery and Jim Crow against African Americans, second class citizenship for women - both white and Black, internment camps for Japanese Americans, brutal labor practices against Chinese immigrants, imperial aggression in Latin America and the Middle East.

We cannot ignore Frederick Douglass' admonition that the 4th of July does not mark freedom or self-determination for Black Americans. The abolitionist newspaper editor faced a similar dilemma on July 4, 1852, as a speaker in Rochester, N.Y. "Pardon me; allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?”

In the speech, known as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” the editor/publisher of the North Star answered himself: “But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of 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.”

How can I or you celebrate a day that our ancestors did not benefit from? July 4,1776was a day that white America declared it was free & independent from Great Britain. The war lasted from 1775 until 1783 when the final peace treaty was signed in Paris. Now, the Blackman in America didn't get his freedom until 1865, almost 90 years later. Even though we helped fight in the Revolutionary war we as a people were nothing but the property and servants of others, and even when "freedom" came free to do what? Without land, skills, resources and education our forefathers weren't really free (but that is for another discussion - which I will get to.

It is obvious that African Americans have come a long way. The Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, is evidence of this. However, in the words of Frederick Douglas,
"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice we must mourn. 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 cruelly 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 sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts 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. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."

Last Friday I gathered with a group of Black scholars and we ate, drank and enjoyed watching Roots, Alex Haley's best-selling novel about his African ancestors that follows several generations in the lives of a slave family. Originally aired on national television in 1977, the saga began with Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) a West African youth captured by slave raiders and shipped to America in the 1700s. The family's saga is depicted up until the Civil War where Kunte Kinte's grandson gained emancipation. Roots made its greatest impression on the ratings and widespread popularity it garnered. On average 130 million - almost half the country at the time - saw all or part of the series.

I certainly hope you made the best of a day that continues to mock people of color, for what was true in 1852 is still true today, there is not a nation, or President, guilty of the atrocities that the United States has and continues to perpetuate.