Question:
Should black African Americans celebrate the 4th of July? Why and why not.?
babigurl
2008-07-04 08:42:45 UTC
based on everything they have went through in past lives and generations regarding all racial discriminations and slavery and any other thing. Why would it be OK. And why would it not?
Seventeen answers:
SINDY
2008-07-05 03:12:53 UTC
Why should ANYONE celebrate it? We became independent from British corporations so that we could be controlled by American corporations. Big whoop.
gary
2016-05-27 12:53:08 UTC
The 4th of July represents a celebration of INDEPENDENCE. The purpose of Independence Day is not personal freedom, per se, but rather collective independence of the colonies (later states) from the English monarchy. It can be argued that one does not exist without the other, strengthening any argument that blacks were not deemed free until President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day, 1863. Or you could consider that this wasn't even final until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (6 Dec 1865), that officially eradicated slavery by law. However, there isn't an American alive today that was oppressed under American slavery before the Presidential proclamation or even the 13th Amendment (black or otherwise). It is important to note that all Americans alive today, and even slaves oppressed prior to the 13th Amendment, are/were independent from the English monarchy as of 4 July 1776. Therefore, I don't see why all Americans would not celebrate collective independence on 4 July. If some wish to celebrate FREEDOM on New Year's Day or 6 December, that's great too. I think we should embrace our freedom every day...or at least think about what it means and who continues to fight for that freedom on behalf of the rest of us.
anonymous
2008-07-04 10:27:21 UTC
Curious question. Most white Americans, "racist" or not certainly lament the slavery period in American history..but still celebrate the Independence of this nation. Believe it or not, nobody is really celebrating slavery or ignoring it.



So why wouldn't they celebrate? Black or white Americans are still Americans and the history is what it is. I would imagine that any sane black person would rather be black in America than black in Mugabe's Zimbabwe anyday. Catch my drift..it is the land of the free....reagrdless of what the race hustler's might have you believe.



I bet Bass Reeves celebrated the 4th, and I bet Jim Beckwith did too. They were great men,great Americans and lived well within the memory of actual slavery.
Z Z (Jersey Girl)
2008-07-04 10:20:49 UTC
I think we SHOULD celebrate the Fourth of July. YES, we have been through a lot of discrimination, hatred,etc.



BUT... we are African AMERICANS... We are a part of America. America is a part of us.



It may at times be a love/hate relationship. But that relationship is there!
Widney g
2008-07-04 08:50:10 UTC
Yes we should, because america is for every "american", doesn't mather if they are white, black, yellow, brown or purple. In the black community we always talk about how we don't want to feel left behind and seggregated, after all that's what Marthin Luther King Jr. was talking about. A country where everyone is the same, equal and have the same ideals. So if you don't celebrate 4th july, you're not an american, and you shouldn't be in america. Go to Blackland.
Too Sense
2008-07-04 09:33:34 UTC
Its ironic because one of the reason the south joined the north to fight for independence was because the Britian was about to ban slavery in the British empire (which they did in 1807) and then complete abolished it in 1833.



edit: well "the south" wasn't techniclly "the south" at that point but you get my drift. at the time of independence all the colonies were slave states.
anonymous
2008-07-04 09:12:51 UTC
I agree with Omangus. Very smart guy. Celebrate for now ... not the wrongs of the past.
juster
2008-07-04 16:26:33 UTC
i see no point. you could say ok its history get over it. but then why are we even celebrating in the first place? to remember history! therefore it would make you a hypocrite to celebrate it if you are black. just my opinion
Omagus
2008-07-04 09:02:06 UTC
At the very least, we should use today to celebrate the freedoms that we currently have, not wallow in the wrongs of the past.
☆ReRe★
2008-07-04 08:52:19 UTC
yea it's true that when independence day was made black people still weren't free.

im today, i am an american, and i AM free.

if some black people dont feel they should celebrate that then they need to leave america.

if your going to keep that mindset then america is not for you because white people are always going to be around us here.

i celebrate independence day because i am not a slave, i am free so i show it.





that's just how i feel on that
Keri K
2008-07-04 08:49:31 UTC
african AMERICAN! I believe its here for every Americans rite to celebrate. If anything its a good excuse for a bbq and family. :)
Honey Badger Doesnt give a Shat
2008-07-04 09:30:57 UTC
yes because they went through all of thoes things with in and for american and fouhgt in the many wars independence has no color
Mr. 3.14™
2008-07-04 09:04:48 UTC
Ive been doing it for the last 17 years of my existence, I don't see any reason to stop now. What kind of question is this anyway?
Marvin R
2008-07-04 09:20:30 UTC
of course they should -- they are U.S. citizens. read your history and learn about Chrispus Attucks who was Black and the first recognized causality of the American Revolution.
anonymous
2008-07-04 09:16:27 UTC
yes they should they are American after all
anonymous
2008-07-04 08:50:53 UTC
If they won't then what exactly should they do? Turn their backs on anything to do with white history (it is their history also)? Leave this country? Stay and complain forever? Voluntary segregation? Good grief. Wtf would make someone who would ask a question like this happy?



The thumbs up came from me (except for terrel's, lol). The question is what aggravated me.
anonymous
2008-07-04 13:51:28 UTC
Check ths out:



http://www.mediatakeout.com/users/Rev_Billybob/39757/africans_in_america_are_stolen_kidnapped_and_brainwashed_people_and_then_forcibly_taken_to_this_landdont_barbeque_any_chicken_on_the_4thjust_barbeque_cow_and_pig_parts_in_memory_of_the_100_million_afr



if you want to and here's Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech on the 4th of July:



Fellow citizens, pardon me, 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 the disparity between us. 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 light 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 that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.



"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."



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 jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry this day, "may my right hand 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 there 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, shall not confess to be right and just....



For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the ***** race. Is it not as 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, and secretaries, having among us lawyers doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; and that, while we are engaged in all manner of 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 worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!...



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, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in 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 denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; 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 savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.



Go where you may, 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.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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