What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
The Declaration of Independence announced that all men are created equal and white America celebrated the announcement; black slaves, however, could not. Although they may have been created equal (a point disputed at the time, as blacks were deemed by many in the medical field to be of inferior intellect), they certainly were not held to be of equal status upon their entry into America as slaves. What seemed an apparent, self-evident right in the Declaration of Independence did not become legally apparent until 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. And even then blacks were still subjected to the Black Codes and to Jim Crow laws for the better part of a century. And even today they prejudiced against by a justice system that profits from their incarceration. The fact is that the Fourth of July did not mean the same thing to the slave that it did to John Adams.
What has changed since Douglass speech to now? Is slavery abolished? Perhaps in name only. The new slave plantations have been offshored to distant lands by corporations established and entrenched through neo-colonial, imperialistic processes in , and as crime rises in urban areas like New York and Portland, polarization between whites and blacks increases. Whites feel that they are being made to pay for the Peculiar Institution of the Founding Fathers. But what should be done about it?
Blacks today are told to trust the science and accept a vaccine that was taken by Hank Aaron days before he died. There has been no commemoration for Hank Aaron, one of baseballs great black players of all timewhy (MLB, 2021)? Fear that it might make other blacks mistrust the science? Yet this is the same scientific establishment that conducted the Tuskegee Experiments. Why should black America trust this science? It has used and abused them from day one. America has never been for thembut rather for the hypocritical establishment that used them and misused them and continues to abuse them. Douglass pointed that out in his speech: the Declaration of Independence was their Passover. For blacks it was a hollow and hypocritical expression. Even Thomas Paine lamented it, but then he actually believed that all men were equal. The Founding Fathers evidently did not. Even a century later, that belief persisted. Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens believed in the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man (Douglass, 1852).
Douglass…
References
Frederick Douglass, “Letter to Thomas Auld” (September 3, 1848) p. 3
Douglass, Frederick, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July 5, 1852).
MLB. (2021). 'Proud' Aaron receives COVID-19 vaccine. Retrieved from https://www.mlb.com/news/hank-aaron-covid-19-vaccination
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