Free-ish.
“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…”
This past Saturday was my first 4th of July as a citizen of this country and it was a complicated feeling.
American ideals are fundamentally beautiful. But they are just that. Ideals.
When the Declaration of Independence was written, it did not include people who look like me. In their cry for freedom, the Founding Fathers of this country deliberately omitted any mention of slavery, an institution they would actively continue to practice for 89 years. It’s not difficult to understand why for a black person in this country, the Declaration of Independence is simply beautiful, flowery fiction fueled by opportunistic hypocrisy.
This weekend I thought of black soldiers who fought on both sides of the revolution (black loyalists and black patriots) in hopes of gaining freedom. Black loyalists and black patriots alike fought for countries they hoped would protect them for demonstrating their loyalty. Imagine fighting a war for a country you did not even belong to. A country filled with people who kidnapped you, separated you from your family and sold you like property to build up their wealth and status. A country that did not even see you as human.
For the patriots specifically, imagine fighting for a country that would graciously welcome your support on the battlefield in the name of freedom, then turn around and deny you yours. A country that would take everything from you, use you for their own gain (whether political or financial…usually both) and opt to discard and dismiss you as an inconvenience to some other country when they no longer saw a use for you (seriously, google “Lincoln and African American delegation”).
These blatant contradictions baffle and infuriate me. How could people who understood the tyranny and hypocrisy of British rule as well as their own inherent right to freedom turn around and commit even worse acts to other humans? Was there no sense of cognitive dissonance? This is the tension that I’m wrestling with.
Despite all of this and more, I find myself proud and in awe of African-Americans who persevered against all odds. With as much as they’ve lost, they decided that this new country was their home. I choose to celebrate the people who fought to make the original American ideals true for all Americans. Those still fighting to this day.
I’ll never forget the wave of emotion I felt the day I became an American citizen and heard the judge say, “this nation, with all of its rights and liberties now belongs to you too.” When he went on to say that this new status was one my future children would also inherit, I cried. I didn’t expect to, but I did.
As a child of immigrants, who witnessed only a fraction of the hardship my parents experienced just to get me to this point, it was such a gift to know I could simply pass this status on. This weekend as I reflected on the holiday, it finally dawned on me just how significant that moment truly was. Where not too long ago, people who look like me passed on a status of bondage, the status I am now able to pass down is one of freedom. How radically beautiful.
Like that cold January day at Faneuil Hall, I imagine the 4th of July will always bring me a mix of emotions:
Grief for what came before, joy for what has finally come, and hope for what is still yet to come.
