Whose Independence Day is it?

Whose Independence Day is it?

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  2 Corinthians 3:17 (NIV)

By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.

It is difficult for me to commemorate a holiday that is supposed to be in celebration of gaining freedom from a system wrought in oppression.

I am by NO MEANS ANTI-AMERICIAN! I am, however ANTI-HATRED.

As American people we are supposed to share something in common. We should, in being Americans, have discovered some noteworthy attributes that bear commonality in each one of us. Our name alone has philosophical consequences on human life, everywhere else except here in the United States of America.

We were taught and encouraged at an early age to be “Proud of being an American.” It was considered a badge of honor, a mark of allegiance to identify yourself as an American.

When did this euphoric umbrella collapse, causing the deluge of prejudices and hatred to fall on the heads of state and those running for political leadership, rendering them delusional to, “Freedom and Justice for all?”

This collapse of our great empire has caused an attack on things not of the status quo; to include Black and Brown people, gays, lesbians and it appears anybody who’s not a part of the new hate group-Thrumpies. If not checked, questioned and brought into the limelight for all the people to witness; in actuality it will more than likely spread like kisses in a nudist colony.

In her infancy America had “certain appropriateness, for it implied allegiance and approval of its people. Until the people began to look different, they were no longer Tea Baggers. They were growing into a multicultural explosion of different colors and different kinda love affairs.

Now because of these Browning and kissing differences, we are coming to grips with an assortment of racial divides, i.e. health disparities, prison rates and homelessness and we dare not exclude the dismal and depressive increasing rate of the Black high school dropout.

America has beaten up on its own people for so long that it has now begun to attack the environment. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the BP oil disaster or the Macondo blowout) is a gigantic constant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history.

We can’t continue to carry on in this manner.

What once set us apart from other countries now seems to be bringing us together on a destructive path in the alienation of humans, pulling lives apart?

We need to stop being an American in name only.

Let us ask the question that was asked in an Independence Day Speech at Rochester, 1841 by Frederick Douglass (A former slave himself, who became a leader in the 19th Century Abolitionist Movement) at that time it was plain to see that the speech was written for Black slaves (not meant to be politically correct) and now entire segments of Americans, can be included in this speech that reminds us of just how far we haven’t come.

“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?

… 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.”