What to the Compassionate is the Fourth of July?

Let’s go back to the summer of 2008, Barak Obama had just launched his presidential campaign centered on Hope and Black Americans everywhere waited with bated breath for the controversies and attacks that would naturally be a part of that campaign. Remarkably, Senator Obama had very few problems from his past come up – but there was one that stood out to me and that in the last year, I have been thinking about often.

Footage of his pastor Jeremiah Wright declaring that God not Bless America, but that God damn America became the scandals of scandals. In hindsight, this was not a scandal, but at the time it threw into question something integral to the American identity of exceptionalism. Yet here we are almost 20 years later, and I wonder to myself, how much appropriate the sentiment of asking God to damn America, a phrase that really asks for condemnation or judgement when you strip it of its colloquial curse tone. I am not sure I am ready to call for divine damnation but asking for a divine favor or good will as “blessing” connotates, seems unsavory.

I have made a life, a career even, of positioning myself as someone who criticizes America because of my love for America. Five years ago, I even expressed the duality of my experiences and vision in a blog post titled, “Celebrating July 4th: Loving America, While Reckoning with Her Past.” In that piece, I tried to express understanding for those who feel they can no longer celebrate America due to the issues that plagued the day, and the racism, sexism, and classism embedded in the past, while also expressing why I still committed myself to the promises of liberty and justice for all. But today? Today, I had to re-evaluate that commitment.

The delicate optimism that I tried to convey in that writing is not as easy to come by today. No country is ever or has ever been perfect – but in the last six months we have been bombarded with events, news, and policies seemingly designed for the sole purpose of cruelty. Almost constantly it seems that the rule of law and the norms of public engagement are perverted in ways that disregard human value and worth. And frankly, like most people I have committed to focusing on the everyday in my own life so that the macro does not paralyze me from being a mother, a student, a friend. Thus, I have spent very little time communicating my own views or expertise on pressing issues, but I still care.

And as we approach another Independence Day – a day of remembrance and for some celebration – I wanted to reflect on why for me – today is about grieving. If you are a person that cares about humanity, irrespective of artificial borders, irrespective of gender binaries, irrespective of any classification other than that they are people, how can today be anything other than a day of mourning?

There are a lot of reasons for this, but because it is most recent, I think about the creation and praise of the new concentration camp in Florida. People are literally buying merch for a place designed to detain people in the most heinous of conditions (and if you are a person that thinks that that does not matter because you accept that the people who will be held there are “criminals” – I just want to highlight that who is and who is not a criminal is a policy choice just as much as it is an individual’s choice, especially when talking about a complex civil offense like immigration). I now understand how people were totally fine with the treatment of the Jews in Hitler’s Germany, if there were rhetorical ways to classify them as criminals. This really is not a piece about immigration, but I use this an example of how we have become so desensitized to seeing people who are not in our own social/class/race circles as “other” that there is no bare minimum appeal to human decency.

And while I know that is not unique to this period, nor is it unique to America – I still think often about how we are supposed to be better. The battle cries of “Liberty and Justice for All” and “All men are created equal” are supposed to make us better. The passing of the 14th Amendment, which created birthright citizenship (still constitutional law by the way) and federal protection over state’s ability to infringe on citizenship rights, due process, and equal protection holds the promise of a better, fairer, and dare I say just society. And yet, we cannot let the old ideas of hierarchy (race, gender, or class) go.

Something that has really troubled me about the current moment is that I always used to read about the atrocities of the past and wondered what I would do in those situations. Would I have been on the right side of history – fought for the oppressed? Risk my comfort for the least of these? And the kind of numb-shattering truth of the last six months is that for most of us – the answer is nothing. I want to be a part of the change, but the problem seems too big too macro for anything to matter. So, I mourn.

And every year, not just this year, I read Fredrick Douglas’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” and am reminded that mourning cannot be the end. Douglas did say that “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must morn.” But he did not stop at mourning. He used his platform as a Fourth of July speaker to call out the injustice of slavery and the slave trade and to point out the hypocrisies of American freedom and equality against the plight of the millions of enslaved. He also spent the time rebuking the Church for forfeiting their message of the gospel by being partnered with the politics of oppression. Lastly, he reminds us that there is still hope and that whatever the peril or the cost, we must drive towards a day where human suffering is not a political campaign promise, where oppression is not the strategy, and where human brotherhood supersedes human violence.

Douglas’ message applies still today. We must continue to point out the cruelty of policies that starve the poor, to provide the rich with tax cuts, of policies that treat humans simply because of their “documented” status as disposable, of policies that try to revert America back to a time where only white men had voices worth any value. For those of us with ties to the Christian church, we must also be steadfast in disentangling the unholy bargain that the Church has made with a sole political leader. We must reject a salvation that is America first and not Christ-centered. Lastly, we must continue to work for community – on the micro level in our own lives and on the macro level in our states, nation, and globe. Striving for humanity might feel like a losing battle, but it’s a battle that we cannot afford to lose.

I don’t criticize people for celebrating today. I know the patriotism that flows deeply from many Americans. I have spent the better part of my life holding space for both my love for America and my acknowledgment of her history and present troubles. While it is getting harder to justify that allegiance, I still choose to try and work for a better America. I think I have just come to realize that:

I love America, but I love humanity more.