Get To Work

Every year, when Independence Day rounds the bend, and with it the frivolity and celebration of a nation who rightfully should raise a raucous cheer for the freedom which we have won for ourselves and our posterity, I find myself in the conflicting position of considering those who were not freed by the act of that independence. I have to consider this, because half of my ancestral lineage stops in 1860, as does that of another of our podcast co-hosts. That is the time after which, my ancestors were finally considered the humans they actually were instead of chattel and workhorses.

I consider that, despite the great enlightenment that bore it forth, 1776 was not a great year of independence for them. These men and women lived for thirty years under the whip and torturous overseers before witnessing from the sidelines as in 1807, the slaves of Great Britain were finally freed. And yet, here in America, we were really only just getting started. After all, it was in 1803 that the Louisiana Purchase came underway, and freedom actually began to work in reverse for a great many who lived in that territory as the more lenient Code Noir of the French, wherein a slave might buy their own freedom, to the merciless tyranny of the Americas, wherein a slave was not only a slave until they died, but a freedman might find himself reined in under the yoke of slavery, so imbalanced was the judicial system under which slavery laws were enforced.

This monumental freedom acclaimed was only the freedom of white landowners, and eventually, white servants. It worked against all others.

Another independence day comes to mind: Texas independence, when we cast off the yoke of Mexican tyranny in 1836. And what tyranny was it that we cast off? The tyranny of being told that slavery was being abolished, which was finalized in Mexico in 1837 (but was underway well before then). And so, another independence day brought with it independence only for white landowners. And this fact was driven home by the reign of terror of the subsequent Texas Rangers, who killed anyone who remotely looked non-white.

Only a few years ago, we “discovered” that racial inequity existed in the application of justice across America. I say “discovered” in quotes because the minority community had known this and had been saying this for decades. We also “discovered” that minority communities had been pushed into poisonous areas around localities across the United States, were denied housing and opportunities to build wealth, were shut out of football coaching opportunities, and the list is nearly endless. To cap this off just before Independence Day this year, we’ve decided that it’s time to remove protections aimed at increasing diversity in college admissions which had been in place for fifty years, because, apparently somehow, we believe that America can ignore skin color in decision making, despite a history replete with failures to do so.

I shake my head in shame at these developments.

But I celebrate Independence Day all the same. Why? Because we have to remember who we are. That is, whether written for white slaveowners or not, the fact is that the Constitution of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence before that, shine a light on justice.

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It’s that little bit in there—establish justice—that stands out to me. I note that it is the absolute first of the responsiblities of governments called out here: to establish justice. Not just for one, but for all, and eventually, we will see this come to fruition. Oh, we are not there yet. But I believe in us, and I believe we can get there.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

All men (and women) are created equal. This is the absolute truth. Even when we wrote it, we had no idea what it meant. We didn’t understand that equality should or could include the very people that we enslaved to do our bidding on massive plantations. We didn’t understand that in the 1860s, we didn’t understand it in the 1920s when the KKK almost took over our federal government to install their White Christian Nation, nor in the 1940s when returning black servicemen and women were denied access to VA loans and other GI Bill benefits. We didn’t get it in the 1960s, though many of us tried to explain it. And judging by the context in which Martin Luther King, Jr’s quotes are routinely abused, we didn’t get it in the 1970s either. In the 1980s when crack cocaine combined with income inequality led to violence in the inner cities, even though in the suburbs cocaine was being used with as much impunity (guess where the DEA focused their efforts). I’ll stop there.

But we got it a little bit more than we did before. Today, the GI bill is applied equally to black, brown, and white folks (although if you try to sell that house the VA loan bought you, you’ll still get less for it if you’re black, as will your realtor if they’re black). We do have some emerging problems. White Christian Nationalists have again managed to install themselves in our government, holding our nation hostage. We’ve beaten them before, and we will again this time. And governors across the country are often commuting or reducing sentences based on the failed war on drugs, which we’ve learned was really a war on black and brown people.

Oh, there’s a lot to do.

But it starts with taking ownership of this nation. And that is why I celebrate. Because it’s my nation, and it’s your nation. And together, we will shape it into what we want it to be, no matter how long that takes. Yes, it is possible to celebrate the opportunities we have, while at the same time, being realistic about the challenges ahead. With a clearly radicalized Supreme Court, it can be easy to lose sight of that possibility, of that vision of the shining city on the hill that we never were, but that we should perpetually strive to be.

Happy Independence Day!

Now, get to work.