For this holiday weekend, we should rethink priorities
Public protests. Racial hostility. Record high unemployment. Business closures. Rampant fear. Face mask shaming. Policing the police. And viral ignorance.
Not to mention an out-of-control pandemic, already infecting 2.7 million Americans and causing more than 128,000 deaths (and counting), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, canceled county fairs, street festivals and fireworks shows amid the patriotic illusion of social distancing. Happy Fourth of July, everyone! John Adams, our second president, wrote on July 3, 1776, that Independence Day should be solemnized with “pomp and parade … games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations.”
Well, we’ve got the guns thing going for us, with new sales off the charts, including nearly 3 million first-time gun owners, according to FBI data.
Let’s check off the other things from Adams’ list, written to his wife, Abigail: This year we have zero pomp, only a couple of parades, mostly mind games, sports are a rumor and bonfires have followed looting in the streets. Oh, and Americans are the unhappiest we’ve been in 50 years, according to a new poll.
Instead of looking into the nighttime sky for patriotic illuminations, maybe we should reexamine our country’s search for its lost soul.
At this truly historic moment on the most American of holidays, let’s issue a referendum on who we are as a nation and as a people. Which do we value more, our personal freedoms or our public health? Are we a land of normalized racists, or should we make institutional reparations for our past sins?
I say we take 8 minutes and 46 seconds to consider our cultural blind spots and systemic prejudices. I’ll be the first to proclaim that I struggle with race relations, as well as with the inner debate between my personal freedoms and our public health.
Americans are now complaining about “coronavirus caution fatigue” as we march into month five of the pandemic, and only half of our country’s adults would allow a possible vaccine into their body, according to a poll from the Associated Press.
Just days ago, federal health officials reported record new daily coronavirus infections, with figures surpassing 50,000 cases a day for the first time as states reopen their virus-decimated economies. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Paul Revere of our time, continues to caution us that COVID-19 cases could grow to 100,000 a day if we don’t follow public health recommendations.
Maybe if he instead rode horseback at night we would pay more attention to his warnings of this no-longer-surprising attack. Fauci’s voice is hoarse. Our ears are deaf. And our older, vulnerable population of citizenry is getting snuffed out like church steeple lanterns in a storm.
Meanwhile, we’re searching in the darkness of despair for national heroes of any kind. At the presidential level, we’ll soon be forced to vote for a disappointing president or a disappointing vice president. It feels like a choice for your favorite nursing home curmudgeon. Either way, they’ll both likely be historical footnotes by the time our country makes significant reforms to its racial inequities.
At this point in their campaigns, I have little interest in President Donald Trump’s loyalists or his critics. Both groups are as predictable as his tweets. However, I have growing interest whether there are any Americans still undecided with their vote, or if they will vote, in the November election. There must be some of these voters somewhere. (If you’re one of them, please contact me.)
Our country hasn’t changed as dramatically as some of us proudly tell ourselves, or as much as others keep complaining about. We’re just viewing America from a different perspective, the cracked kaleidoscope of the Black experience.
We’re merely witnessing token or symbolic changes with promises for more to come. For now, no more Aunt Jemima, a marketing character created to sell a ready-made product — syrup-covered racial stereotyping. This sticky imagery only reaffirmed the racialized social order in our country.
How about the face-lift to Disney’s park ride, Splash Mountain, with its themed “Song of the South” from the racist 1946 musical. White Americans are rolling their eyes at this politically correct “overreaction,” as I’ve been told. Black Americans are applauding it as just another minor change to remove hurtful, painful typecasting.
Princeton University is removing the name of former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from its school of public affairs, considering his racist views and policies during his lifetime. Realtors are making changes to their bedroom description, from “master” to “primary” to demonstrate awareness of historic improprieties. Heck, even the Dixie Chicks changed their name to the Chicks. Really? Really.
Are we erasing history one statue at a time or are we genuflecting to a trendy new national narrative? I believe this is how the United States is supposed to work, as a tug of war between rope-burned realities and unsoiled ideals.
It’s been said that dramatic, historic change will happen only when white America feels compelled enough to make it happen, or forced into action through loss of power? Maybe it’s more simple than all that.
“We need white people to tell other white people to stop being racist,” joked comedian Wanda
Sykes to late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
She wasn’t joking, though. This is where we’re at regarding race relations on the Fourth of July 2020. Yes, it’s sadly similar to where we were on the Fourth of July 1920, and in 1820.
On this holiday weekend, our proverbial fireworks display seems like one big dud on the driveway of our dreams. So let’s trek back in time to July 3, 1776, with John Adams’ star-spangled words of wisdom.
“You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not,” he wrote about Independence Day. “I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means.”