Every year on the Fourth of July holiday I have conflicted feelings, and this year was no different. As I see the countless American flags on lawns and on clothes, I cannot fully wrap my mind around two competing ideas. On the one hand, this is my country. My ancestors helped build every inch of this nation. Their labor, and the labor of millions of African Americans, is the reason this nation has been at the forefront of global power for so long. But on the other hand, how do I belong to a country that is seemingly and consistently trying to destroy people who look like me? From local police to national policy, the group that consistently feels the brunt of most ills are Black folks. “Last hired and first fired!” as James Evans from “Good Times” used to say. Needless to say, each year as America celebrates its independence, I am left to ask myself some hard questions about whether I truly belong to this nation and if I will ever be considered a full citizen.
This year, many Black folks celebrated the newly federally mandated Juneteenth holiday on June 19 as the “true” holiday to acknowledge Black people’s independence and freedom when the formal end of U.S. chattel slavery came to a close…on paper. As we know, many forms of slavery continued to persist for decades to come in the form of convict leasing, sharecropping, and draconian Jim Crow laws that limited Black American freedoms, mobility, financial advancement, and much more. This country has a well documented history of brutality and exclusion. It also has a history of incorporating many different racial and ethnic groups (even if begrudgingly) who come to this independent nation seeking more freedoms and an opportunity to experience the American Dream. This dream has not been doled out equally and for many it feels permanently deferred. However, it is the promise and the hope of America that allows so many, Black folks included, to believe in and celebrate its promise.
I am going to spend the remainder of the month thinking about what freedom and independence mean to me. It will be an interesting journey to do so since I’ll be spending the month in London, England. However, whenever I visit England, I always have such clear(er) thoughts about America. Possibly because, similar to what poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran has written, the mountain is often clearer to the climber once the climber has left the mountain.
America is my complicated mountain. It is the recent home of my ancestors, it is the place they helped build, and it is a land that possesses some true beauty and amazing people within its borders. So, as I think about independence this month, I will process all of it, the ugly and America the beautiful.
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”; and co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC and host of The Blackest Questions podcast at TheGrio.