(ThyBlackMan.com) In 1852, Frederick Douglas posed a question that reverberates to this day: What, to the slave, is your Fourth of July? Some thirteen years later, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the 3.5 million southern slaves.
As a result, according to When the Fourth of July Was a Black Holiday, an article written by Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, African Americans began marking the anniversary of the proclamation as their own celebration. Who’d blame them, after generation upon generation of slavery?
But it was short-lived; the aforementioned authors go on to show how the white backlash to black ‘freedom’ was birthed from the lingering racial resentment over the outcome of the Civil War (detailed in their new book, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy.
If anything, history is cyclical. History never really says good-bye, Eduardo Galeano writes, history says, ‘See you later’.
The phenomenon of history reliving itself one hundred and sixty-six years after Douglas’ question is playing itself out as the drama of the Donald J. Trump presidency – and what that presidency means for the values Americans have cherished since our founding.
Like our post-slavery ancestors, the celebration of American values is short-lived. From the nation’s first African American president to the most recent election, we are seeing – not a turning back of the clock – but a shattering of it – those democratic precepts that underscored generations of African Americans up from slavery. All in less than a blink of an eye.
What’s even more frightening is that it’s not just Black people; it is Muslims, Mexicans, other immigrants, lesbians and gays etc.
The Fourth of July has always been, in theory, a white’s only celebration – hence the reactionary antagonism toward free blacks post-emancipation. White people have always claimed America as their land. Now, with Donald Trump’s ascendancy offering them the stage they’ve sought since the end of slavery, white people can allow themselves to voice their antipathies loudly and without guilt.
“Make America White Again” (soon to morph into “Keep America White” with the midterm elections and the 2020 election) has become the rallying cry for the legions of poor, undereducated, rural whites who bought into Donald Trump’s victimization politics.
History, though, is also cyclical when it comes to resistance in the struggle for peace and justice. Frederick Douglas would write in 1857, Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
It’s discombobulating to think what is happening to this country; the tsunami of judicial, executive and legislative rulings; the rollback of affirmative action policies; the veritable rise in hate crimes since the election of 2016; the porous state of affairs with traditional American allies across the globe – it appears a racial apocalypse is just ahead.
Although July 4, 2018 is, in many ways, a landmark of where we are politically and otherwise, it’s also an opportunity to ‘celebrate’ the human spirit, how we have been wired to move forward with the best in us – regardless of the recalcitrant forces bent on turning us back.
In the end, it will not be Black resistance, Muslim resistance or Mexican resistance, but rather human resistance – the kind that believes, in the words of Dr. King, that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
Anytime a voice appears on the national or international stage and appeals to the worst in us, there have been anti-voices opposed to the thwarting of human decency; movements aligned in history against merciless dictators and pre-empted their exit from the stage of human progress.
This moment in history will not be any different. The resistance will continue.
Staff Writer; W. Eric Croomes
This talented brother is a holistic lifestyle exercise expert and founder and executive coach of Infinite Strategies LLC, a multi-level coaching firm that develops and executes strategies for fitness training, youth achievement and lifestyle management. Eric is an author, fitness professional, holistic life coach and motivational speaker.
In October 2015, Eric released Life’s A Gym: Seven Fitness Principles to Get the Best of Both, which shows readers how to use exercise to attract a feeling of wellness, success and freedom (Infinite Strategies Coaching LLC, 2015) – http://www.infinitestrategiescoaching.com.