My conventional, performative patriotism probably hit peak when I was 12. I spent the Bicentennial summer in western Massachusetts, and who celebrated 1976 more fervently than small-town New England? Consensus builder Gerald Ford was president, the Reflecting Pool sparkled, and the U.S. was not (anymore) bombing anybody. Though I was called “ni**er” for the first time in my life that summer, the world — my world — seemed simpler, and I could uncritically, unselfconsciously, wave a tiny stars-and-stripes.
These days, I’m more likely to observe Independence Day with a rereading of Frederick Douglass’ astonishing, searing, stirring “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” and a reflection on all that my people have done, in spite of, to make this country worth shooting fireworks over. Black Americans have believed in America, in American ideas and ideals, with an incandescent intensity. And yet here we are at the Semiquincentennial, ‘buked and scorned high and low.
I’ll take some time today to remember the ancestors, to vibe to our world-spanning culture, to acknowledge this country’s jaw-dropping natural beauty, and to demand better.
“For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Marchers in Alabama cross the horizon on the march from Selma to Montgomery on 21 March 1965. Matt Herron, photographer.
Happy birthday, America. Happy birthday.