Being Black on the 4th of July
I used to throw an epic BBQ every 4th of July.
Years ago I had a duplex on the Brooklyn waterfront, whose proximity to the Macy’s annual fireworks show was sufficient to cause temporary blindness, tinnitus, and leave my clothes reeking of sulphur for days. I would spend two solid months planning this shindig: curating the guest list, stockpiling alcohol, and preparing the menu, a gluttonous feast worthy of rocket’s red glare and bombs bursting in air.
Paisano’s, my butcher for the past twenty-two years, knew on July 3rd to have copious amounts of my preferred ground beef mix (short rib, brisket & chuck roll) ready for a recipe I’d spent years perfecting. Sopped in Worcestershire sauce, with finely diced habanero and a hunk of Monterey pepper Jack cheese its center, charcoal grilled and served on a perfectly toasted kaiser roll, Jack’s Famous Fire burger served as the anchor for this “patriotic” exercise in hedonism. Full of seared cow and booze, my friends and I would flounce our way to my rooftop, via staircase or fire escape, to be dazzled by the extravagant display of light and sound and smoke.
It felt good at the time. Rapturous, actually.
Like most people, I reveled in the lies of my childhood. I embraced a mythology designed to subjugate me, under the guise of celebrating liberation. I enjoyed the simplest, most uncomplicated kind of relationship one can have with Truth: I ignored her, because the Lies weren’t just comfortable, soothing, or unchallenging:
The Lies were seductive, exciting.
The lies came draped in ‘splosions that turned night to day, replete with legends of heroism, and cherished childhood memories. As I aged, my relationship with the realities of the country of my birth became more complex. I expanded my reading beyond the propaganda I was taught in my “history” classes. I saw the words of the founders, as contrasted to my lived experience as a marginalized person, in brand new light. Horrific parts of this nation’s history became harder and inevitably impossible to ignore, as I learned what I was taught to believe was the misfortune and fault of the oppressed was actually grand design.
Eventually you tire of loving someone for their potential.
For a while, as my perceptions expanded while decolonizing my mind, I deluded myself with the belief that loving my country in spite of its clear hatred for me, somehow made me “more patriotic.”
That was before I read Frederick Douglass “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”. And before I learned the sovereign nation of Hawaii was annexed by American capitalists on July 4th, 1894.
Today is a halcyon day in Brooklyn, bright and sunny; perfect weather for a BBQ. These days, between a combination of revulsion at and awareness of the environmental damage caused by the meat processing industry, I’m mostly pescatarian, so Paisano’s is safe. Watching racism and police brutality rise in tandem with protests against racism and police brutality has me questioning all of my previous concepts of patriotism.
I’m not inclined to celebrate the independence of a nation built on genocide, while living on stolen Lenape land.
The fireworks which once were a welcome distraction from the hypocrisy of the nation I call home now feel like so much psychological warfare, industrial strength explosions with enough force to set off car alarms and knock plants off my window sills, accompanied by the ever present sirens and police helicopters. And as Covid is raging out of control, due to a combination of abject incompetence and the unchecked malice of the federal government, it’s unlikely anyone but my cat Bowie will see me today. Nostalgia is a poor panacea, as I learn to hold myself and my country responsible for the incongruence of our words and (in)actions. Few things are as enlightening as reflecting on your own past ignorance.
Sometimes I miss my own former naiveté.
