What Is The 4th of July to This Slave Descendent

1.  It is Nostalgia – As a child growing up in the south, this was the day that all of my extended family would get together.  People were able to get vacation from work for the holiday.  We looked forward to my Aunt Grace traveling from New York and my Uncle Bill and his family traveling from South Carolina.  It was the one time of year that Aunt Bae made her caramel cake and my Mama made homemade vanilla ice cream.  It was the weekend for family reunions where extended family could come together.  It was the time for cousins to reconnect.  It was a time for food, music and drink.  Even now, we often reminisce about spending each fourth of July at Chewacla State park in Auburn, AL, swimming in the murky lake water that we wouldn’t dare let our children or grandchildren swim in today.  What a time we had.
2. It is Pride – The United States of America is my home.  It is where I was born.   My people, Black people, built this country.  The ‘bones’ of this country were built on the backs of the free and exploited labor of Black people.  And the flesh on those bones continues to be supplied by the exploited labor of Black people.   I marvel at their talent, creativity, industriousness and resilience in the midst of horrific circumstances.  How can I not be proud of them!  Being a Black American is  like being born into a family that is less than ideal.  Sometimes being born has to be enough.  In my case, I have fared well.  I was born into a great, though not perfect, family.  My grandfather was a successful entrepreneur.  My grandmother was a loving nurturing woman.  My Mom and Dad and our extended family of aunts and uncles  were hardworking, honorable and successful people who were committed to their families and raised great humans.  Their legacy continues today as I look at my siblings and my cousins and our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
3. It is Concern – While we celebrate the birth of this great country, I am afraid that there are those who wish to take us back to a time that is unredeemable.  It is not possible to go back.  Back to a time and place where enslaved Africans/Black Americans were legally proscribed to a status less than human with the lack of rights and privileges thereto that status.  You see, this country’s leaders considered a fork in the road – to emancipate the slaves and recolonize them to Africa or to continue down the barbaric, inhumane, cruel, violent, exploitative path of continuing slavery. Thomas Jefferson broached, what was for them a dilemma, in Query 14 of the Notes on the State of Virginia (1781).  

“To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. …”that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time, should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of houshold and of the handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed.”

He also wrote:

“It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. –To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral.” 

We know what choice was made.  The choice made was to maintain slavery. Thus, Black people are here.  We are still here.  We are the thread that is holding this country together.  You know, the one that if pulled begins to unravel the whole garment.   Our labor, our cultural, intellectual and artistic contributions are visible at every turn.  And amazingly, we have come to the present day without the anger and bitterness that one would expect from a people who have been so savagely wronged.  Just a desire for justice and recompense.  There is no turning back the hands of time.  No matter how many iterations, incantations, playbooks or projects are employed.

4. It is Empathy – In order for this country to be saved some hard truths have to be faced.  The main truth is that racism, the idea upon which the social  structure of this country has been  devised, is made up, invented, contrived.  It is a lie.  There is only one race, the human race.  There is no scientific basis for the construct of race.  Racism is a lie that has had real world consequences of the most sinister, violent and evil kind.  Whiteness as a race is made up.  Blackness as a race is made up.   This lie has been baked into our laws, our institutions, our ideals.  It has been used to justify the exploitation of a group of people, for whom the arrival on the shores of America was not by choice.  I cannot imagine having to face the reality that your whole existence is based on a lie.  Toni Morrison put it like this “If you can only be tall when somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.  And my feeling is white people have a very, very serious problem.  And they should start thinking about what they are going to do about it.  Take me out of it.”  The work to turn the tide in America is not for the Black man to do.  We have our own work.  The responsibility  is for those who have benefitted, continue to benefit and who perpetuate the status quo.  Those who have upheld racism must do the work of dismantling it.
5. It is Hope – I believe that the best days of this country are before us.  I believe that there is always an opportunity to make a correction when going down the wrong path no matter how long and how far you have traveled.  It does not mean that one does not have to face the consequences of bad choices, but that the acknowledgement of those bad choices with the intention and willingness to make a correction can bring transformation. Reconciliation with the past of slavery and the blood shed and opportunities denied to Black Americans is the key to the transformation of this country.  You see, this is not just a physical issue, it is also a spiritual issue.  It brings to mind what Celie said to Mr. in the Color Purple “until you do right by me every thing you think about is going to crumble”.  I don’t say this with anger or bitterness.  I say this with wisdom and understanding.  This country needs 100 percent of every citizen to face the challenges ahead.  The energy, time, human capital and money spent denying black people the right to the benefits of full citizenship needs to be redirected.  If the full, unfettered capabilities and talent of Black Americans were unleashed, eyes have not seen nor ears heard what this country could be.  We have not yet seen greatness.  We can do more together than either of us can do apart.