I don’t begrudge anyone’s choice to celebrate the Fourth. But for many Americans the holiday evokes ambivalence, at best
I do not celebrate the 4th of July. This choice, which I made several years ago, is one that I wouldn’t previously have called expressly political. I didn’t stop celebrating the fourth of July in an attempt to formally renounce the occasion for its utter hypocrisy, though I certainly believe I would have been more than justified in holding that sentiment. I stopped observing the holiday because I felt ridiculous doing so. I won’t deny that the years I spent gathering with friends and family, wearing the colors red, white and blue, and staring upwards into an evening sky illuminated by dazzling light shows were, for me, filled with an irreplicable innocence and optimism. But as I moved into adulthood, learned the expansive and ongoing history of American imperialism, experienced blatant racism, homophobia, and transphobia, and internalized that my ancestors were held in bondage and considered chattel far beyond the date and year that I was supposed to consider the demarcation of American “freedom”, the idea of celebrating the holiday became untenable.
As WEB Du Bois argued in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a “double consciousness” exists for Black Americans – a perception of self that must contend with both a rich inner world and sense of intrinsic value, and a racist dominant society. This state of duality is further complicated by a phenomenon that legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw named intersectionality in 1989. The term describes how interlocking systems of oppression result in hybridized forms of subjugation for individuals who occupy multiple marginalized identities. In this current climate, as a Black American who is also queer and trans* identified, there is not a day that goes by when I don’t feel fear. I fear that I will be harassed, legally denied goods and services, accused of a crime I didn’t commit, or assaulted by a stranger who is incensed by my very existence. Worse, I fear that my name might become a hashtag – my death made a viral internet sensation by onlookers recording my final breaths, as my life is taken by someone who swore to serve and protect me.
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