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TheGrio’s Touré talks to Dr. Christina Greer, host of The Blackest Questions podcast, about Black people celebrating Independence Day.
On the heels of celebrating Juneteenth, many Black people are wondering, should we be celebrating the 4th of July? Considering enslaved Black people weren’t “freed” for almost 100 years from when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, what exactly are we celebrating?
TheGrio’s Touré talks to political analyst and podcast host of theGrio’s The Blackest Questions podcast Dr. Christina Greer about the reminder that this holiday is not about us.
The following is a transcript of their conversation.
Touré: Thanks for joining us. I’m Touré, in for Eboni, who has the day off. Independence Day celebrates the day America became independent from Great Britain, but Black Americans weren’t free. So how do we celebrate a holiday commemorating freedom when we weren’t free for the first Independence Day and for like 90 of them after that?
Dr. Christina Greer is an associate professor of political science and American studies at Fordham University and an all-around brilliant person and also the host of The Blackest Questions, which you can find on theGrio Black Podcast Network or anywhere you get your podcasts.
Chrissy, should Black people be celebrating Independence Day, given the lack of real freedom and justice we have experienced in America?
Greer: Yeah, well Touré, I just, I leave it up to individual families to decide whether or not they want to celebrate. So on the one hand, you know, it’s a holiday. You can go to Old Navy, get your red, white and blue, a little outfit, and have a cookout and build community and realize that this country has yet to live up to the ideals and promises of what it’s supposed to be.
But some people see it as a time where it’s like, you know, our ancestors built this nation. And even though they weren’t free during its inception, every freedom we have is because of the blood, sweat, tears and toil of African-Americans. And so it is an opportunity for some people to actually take the day and spend time with their loved ones and their friends to think about how they fit in American democracy. And so I can’t say, you know, you shouldn’t be celebrating the holiday.
I think it’s a bit of a farce just because America has yet to become what she’s supposed to be and what she’s always said she would be. But we’ve definitely moved in a forward direction. Unfortunately, it seems as though we’re moving in a retrograde direction these past few years. But it is a time for us to think about the trials and tribulations of this nation and the reality of who we are and how we started as a nation.
Touré: To me, having July 4th come so close on the heels of Juneteenth reminds me July 4th was not about us.
Greer: Right? Well, I mean, what holiday is about us in this country? And, you know, the fact that so many Americans and not just, you know, Black Americans, but Americans at large, didn’t know anything about Juneteenth, and they’re still learning about Juneteenth.
You know, that’s an important holiday that we need to dissect and really help understand the real true history of our country. But we’ve never been honest about who we are as a nation. You know, we’re constantly talking about CRT and how our history is being erased from our school books. Well it’s already been erased, by in-large. Much of the information that we know about, especially Black Americans, know about our own history is because we were taught by our families. You know, we went to our own libraries and figured this out.
We weren’t necessarily taught about the Tulsa Race Riots. We weren’t taught about the great Black Americans who fought for civil rights and civil justice, you know, beyond Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. We weren’t even taught about who Rosa Parks really was as a rape investigator and a real all-around brilliant, brave woman that goes beyond sitting on the back of the bus. So our history has always been whitewashed.
And so if we’re thinking about the 4th of July coming on the heels of Juneteenth, then we can also think about it as a continuation of the work that we need to do to educate ourselves about the reality of what this country is and how it truly began as a bunch of, you know, let the British tell it, a bunch of criminals running across the ocean and, you know, raping and pillaging and starting a new land.
I mean, that’s what the founding fathers are to, you know, in many British circles. So, like, we can have a complex conversation about who they were and where we fit into the story, because to ignore July 4th is also to ignore the role that we have played in making this country what it is today.
Touré: In 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech titled “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?” What’s his critique of the country in that speech?
Greer: Well, I mean, Frederick Douglass, beyond being a brilliant scholar, fundamentally, I mean, was a patriot like most Black people. He understood the limitations of this nation, but he also understood the work that had to be done and a multifaceted space.
And so we can critique and also reject some of the principles of this country. But if we are Americans and we can also fight for it for our own ideals, an understanding of what this country can be.
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