“This Land is My Land”
Why I Recognize The Fourth of July
What, to the Descendants of Slaves, is the Fourth of July?
The holiday at which our country rejoices, and joins together to celebrate the Land of the Free — Home of the Brave. To eat, sing, and acknowledge all of our perceived greatness and accomplishments. To celebrate the bravery of many men, who we recognize as the founders of our country’s thriving independence and enterprise. However, what was our country’s founding enterprise? (rhetorical question…)
Many of us in this current American landscape, and for good reason, have never felt particularly tethered to this country’s stars and stripes. How could we? When the history of this nation has always been so notably violent and unapologetically dismissive of its heinous past — to put it mildly.
This land, that has been so tyrannical to those of less fair skin since the birth of a nation — and is so effortlessly dismissive of how we have arrived at this perceived greatness; to how the progress we have made in our infant years — the short time we have been in assembly was made possible.
It is so because the engine of this America has always been Black people.
We are this country. We built this country. The reason this country is so recognized is due to our work, our culture, our pain, and our salvations.
Our people have fought in every American War. We have had a hand in every American milestone. And we are the producers of America’s largest consumptions.
We Are America.
The reason this country is recognized on a global scale and being replicated by cultures around the globe is because of Black people.
The reason people want to travel here and visit our epicenters and our meccas is because of Black people.
Knowing this, I will be damned if I not, too enjoy the celebrations of this nation that we made possible. In which the hands of our ancestors — calloused, bruised, and bloody were used to build this land that so many find so sacred.
And no, it will not be done with disrespect to this nation, by wearing the flag as costume on bikini bottoms and baseball caps. It will be done with proper respect and acknowledgment of the full truth and nothing short. That through it all, we shall overcome.
This is my land.
This is our land.
America would be nothing but a blip on the global playground without the base and pace that was and is, the African Slave and their descendants.
So pardon me as I eat my hotdog and drink my beer. For I Too, Am America
