Tim Wise: Whose Independence Day?

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://timjwise.medium.com/whose-independence-day-5850aaa72a69


As we celebrate this July 4th — 245 years of independence from our former colonial overlords — it would do us well to remember a few things.

These things we should remember not to dampen the enthusiasm with which we celebrate our nation or the people in it. Far be it from me to throw a wet towel over the annual incendiary marriage of American self-love and Chinese manufacturing that occurs once the skies darken on this day each year.

It’s just that independence is an important concept, too complex to be reduced to a mere breaking away from the British monarchy. After all, for Black folks in the colonies, their most immediate oppression was not meted out by King George. Taxes on tea were not among their primary concerns.

For Africans in America, their subjugation typically came at the hands of other colonists, including the very patriots who would go on to fight for the revolution in the name of liberty. The same men who became weepy at the words of the Declaration that “All men are created equal” typically acted in contravention of that maxim every day by the lives they led. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote them, held in bondage hundreds of people at the time he put quill to parchment, suggesting that the 18th-century version of “all lives matter” was no more sincere than today’s.

*snip*