What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?

I posted a snippet of this speech in a previous post written about Juneteenth and Black independence. On Independence Day in 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered the speech "What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July", which discussed the hypocrisy of the country celebrating liberation from one nation while enslaving human beings in their own.

I often quote this speech because it truly illustrates so many themes, including the application of certain moral standards where they affect the interest of the person or party making the judgments; while this speech is my main reason for not supporting American Independence Day, these themes can be applied to our government in many other ways today. The contemporary political climate for many Americans is a systemically oppressive and socially enslaving reality. This has to change. We have to change.

Below is the speech in its entirety. I know that it may be lengthy, but my "Independence Day" ritual is to read and reflect upon it. The speech does speak about the "Christian god", but understand that this idea was/still is the socially expected norm during that time. I'm not that anti-American; America as a nation, gained its independence from the British on July 4, 1776. However, the truth of the matter is that there were many people, even beyond slaves, that were looked down upon and treated unfairly. Many people may ask why the majority of Blacks in America even identify with the enslaved if they are unable to trace their roots directly back to slavery. I'll say this: even if you were not enslaved (or if you do not know whether or not your ancestors were), we are bound by more than our skin color; as a result of slavery, and eventually the development of segregation and Jim Crow, we are still at a systematic disadvantage as a result of how we have traditionally been viewed as a result of our skin color. Other disadvantaged groups where these ideas apply include, but are not limited to: the LGBTQ community, women, mentally ill, and non-Christians.

Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.

What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852

Please enjoy your family time, and if you are drinking - do so safely!

Be Righteous.

I Just Wanna Know Where Da Gold At?

I don't do St. Patrick's Day. I don't mess with it at all. And I'm very vocal and clear when I express my lack of desire to wear green one specific day of the year. All though, while being brainwashed in elementary school, I was convinced that one year I saw a leprechaun in my bedroom (which probably resulted from misplacing my glasses and having dust built up on my ceiling fan). However, ever since I was around 15 or so, I've opted against "celebrating" St. Patty, even though I do enjoy a party - especially after a few drinks.

My last name is typical of Northern Ireland. While it could be Scottish, linguistically it is Gaelic, a language originally spoken by people in Ireland and spreading, eventually, to Scotland. Now, the origins of St. Patrick's Day are religious, but many people see it as an excuse to get wasted and pick four leaf clovers. I don't want to bore with the details of Saint Patrick, or the rebellion, or even how it warped in Irish History, as a day-long break from fasting and Lent. Let's talk about the Irish.

The Irish, like many American immigrants, came to this land of ours on a boat with hopes of opportunity sometime in the 18th century. Many of the Irish farmed until the Industrial Revolution in America, around the 19th century. Now, of course this is an abridged version and a huge chunk of history is missing. Many people know that the Irish, especially New England to Mid-Western ones, were treated like crap and, well, systemically fucked. Besides contributing largely to the development to police agencies, the Irish lived in shanty towns and were not provided educational opportunities, especially with poor health care and a high infant mortality rate. They were even hit with a specific kind of segregation: many places had what were referred to as NINA signs up: "No Irish need apply". I'm very sympathetic to that, and while it might sound like contemporary America familiar, many people do not know that there were Irishmen in the South.

A substantial number of Irish in the South were slave owners. Heck, not saying all Southern whites were racist, but the only non-colored person I've heard of not owning slaves was named Atticus Finch. Where is the cohesion, you ask? Heregoes:
From what is known of my family history on my father's side, my grandfather was the grandson of a slave. As a matter of fact, he had one of the best memories I know. He could tell you where and when something occurred down to the hour and never second guess himself. As such, we very thankfully know from our oral tradition of this bit of information about our family. This is not typical of Blacks in America; many of us have no idea where we came from and I am grateful that, while it does not take us to our African roots, we have a piece of history that we don't have to guess or assume. As such, my Irish last name that has been passed down through generations of men on my father's side is a legacy that feeds the possibility that the people who owned that side of my family were, indeed, Irish immigrants. Now, the Irish mostly favored the Union over the Confederacy, but this changed sometime in 1861. However, in the early 1800s, there were Irishmen in the South that sought to help coloreds, Blacks and natives if there were any left, become better educated; however, angry anti-abolitionists fought against the gesture.

My over-active imagination theory makes me want to do more research, but sadly, I never really think about Irish history until Saint Patrick's Day. I suppose this makes me like most other people, but I'm only human after all.

Be Righteous.

In Defense of Valentine's Day

I can't seem to get it to show entirely, but click the picture for the full image (and hopefully a Valentine's Day laugh!)

Most people know how I feel about consumerist holidays that, without proper knowledge, encourage only the good aspects and nothing about its true origins. I enjoy congregating with the ones I love and, I guess in a sense, that is "celebrating" for me. I don't claim to know everything about everything but I do like to research and, hopefully, understand what things really mean. After a conversation with my good friend Phlip yesterday, I got to thinking about Valentine's Day and whether/why it should be celebrated.

Apparently, Valentine's Day does have Christian roots in that it was named for "one or more" Christian martyrs with the name "Valentine" waybackwhen. However, as with certain other Christian holidays, Valentine's Day dates back to a Pagan holidayLupercalia, named for either "Lupa", shewolf of Rome who nursed Ramulus and Remus, or a Roman god of fertility. Lupercalia rituals included a feast of cakes, animal sacrifice, nakedness, and, well, things dealing with animal blood and women that supposedly symbolized or aided in fertility. Hoping to Christianize the Pagan holiday, Pope Gelacius I declared February 14th Valentine's Day, and, well...after other, sometimes violent, events over time, we have our holiday. [Fun fact: According to a slew of sources, Pope Gelacius I (evil and oppressive or not) was the third and last pope of disputable African origin.]

Check out this History.com video - it's only about 4 minutes long.
History of Valentine's Day

As a closeted romantic, the idea of love is of year round consumption. I think that if you have a wonderful beau or lady-friend, you should treat them wonderfully the entire year instead of making Valentine's Day your one day to deliver grand gestures for things you have yet to do the other 364 days. It's interesting to me, how people decide to bank on love one day a year, or being religious one day a year, or deciding to make big changes in their life one day of a year, simply for the sake of keeping that day meaningful. In the words of my good friend Phlip: "I don't believe in making up for fuckups, I believe in not fucking up." [sidenote: that is now two links to his blog..show him some love!:)]

Does that mean I hate flowers and romantic evenings on Valentine's Day?

Heckie nawww! I love getting gifts! As a matter of fact, my favorite flower is the midnight lily (it's a type of trumpet lily), I love white chocolate on days I'm less than concerned about my calorie count, and jewelry isn't really my thing (hey, I'm a little more a complicated lady than I put on..)! Okay, but seriously, as with any gift, I appreciate gifts from the heart much more than gifts for the sake of giving.

Okay, for real though. Let me stop kidding around; I hope all the love birds every where enjoy their Valentine's Day weekend. Make sure you're making it meaningful and not about the holiday itself; because, well, it really doesn't mean what you think it does. Be safe and wrap it up, because those Pagans were serious about those fertility rituals...

Darwin Day

It's International Darwin Day, a day commemorating the birthday of the father of evolutionist biology, Charles Darwin. As a nontheist/free-thinker (and a person who generally finds much validity in the ideas of evolutionary "theory"), I think that it's important to acknowledge the validity in scientific arguments, despite whether you believe in them or not. I can't say that my beliefs (or lack of beliefs in the religious majority's minds) have encouraged me toward evolution, because I do remember as a church-girl, back in the day, being fascinated with the idea of evolution. However, evolution is important because it does, in a sense, provide evidence for human origins.

I do know, however, from my own personal research that "scientists" have attempted to use science to prove their own agendas. I mean, it's true: from nature v. nurture, right down to eugenics and the Holocaust. One year while in undergrad, in contemplating a third minor (anthropology), I researched the biological justification of men being naturally impulsive sexual creatures and correlations in that argument an a then-new book about how male rapists "can't help it". The evil genius in me was very much interested in the subject, though it was more for kicks and giggles; the entire report spawned from an argument I had with an ex-boyfriend (barf) and, well, I got an A+ for my very original work in a class about Victimology. What can I say? (sheepish grin)

Did Darwin give any credit to, what is now known as, Social Darwinism? Could he have been racist? Sexist? I know that post-Darwin anthropologists have made insensitive claims on the basis of race and gender of "primitive" cultures...quite certainly, eugenics and ideas of the like are adaptations and personal interpretations of Darwin's original work, but what did he think of that? In researching Darwin, he did oppose racism, slavery, and the classification of human beings based on racial differences. As a Black woman, though, I think it's important to know and understand all aspects of the argument. Because an argument has valid points does not make it all completely true or valid (I mean, I think there are high points in every religion and I still don't buy into religious organizations).

Certainly, this requires more research than I can provide in my blog. It certainly is a question that cannot be missed or ignored; I personally am not sure that Darwin's original works were written as or intended to be racially insensitive. I'd like to do more research on the subject though.

Ah, but Happy Darwin Day! Evolutionist Theory is important...whether you buy into it or not. I'm going to make an effort to do more research on racism and sexism (or lack thereof) in his work.

Be Righteous.

Genocide? Gratitude? Gravy? Yes, please.

I recently took a break from writing (yes, at the start of my new blog...d'oh!) due to several reasons: my twenty third birthday, an "extended family" (and not extended-family) vacation, and battling with some personal issues. However, I would like to take a moment to interrupt your tryptophan withdrawal and do a brief spot on Thanksgiving.

I don't really do "holidays". If not for my family, I would have no excuse to have Turkey on "Thanksgiving". I am not religious, and when I have kids onedaydowntheroad, I want them to receive an education that doesn't depict Columbus as a hero, and Thanksgiving as a day where white people and injuns all sat down together and had a wonderful harvest feast. I want my children to know the truth so that they don't have to battle with what they "know" versus what they need to know.

How did we evolve from a culture that embraced genocide at the advancement of the first settlers, to a culture that needs a day set aside to express genuine gratitude? Either way, it's ridiculous.

So..the real meaning of Thanksgiving? Read up: http://richmond.indymedia.org/newswire/display/12342/index.php

My favorite poet, Khalil Gibran, once said that Thanksgiving was "to the honor of the murdered that they are not the murderers." It's difficult, though, when you tend to sympathize with the murdered; the original people of this land are among the poorest and often most forgotten about. I guess that's all I have...no neat bow tied at the end of this post. I just want to encourage awareness.