OPINION: In a nation in denial over systemic racism, freedom is elusive for the descendants of the enslaved
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.
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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.”
Source: Time to reexamine Frederick Douglass’ ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’
