PRINCE HALL
New Member
On the 4th, still second-class
July 2, 2002
BY MICHAEL ERIC DYSON
As the country celebrates its 226th birthday in a couple of days, it's a good time to reflect on a brilliant, engaging and utterly honest new book whose title says it all, Yet a Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel At Home. Authored by syndicated columnist and social critic Deborah Mathis, Yet a Stranger probes the ambivalence blacks feel in being loyal but tortured citizens of a nation whose promise is bigger than its practice.
The first words of Mathis' first chapter, titled ''Which Way to the Promised Land?'' capture the reason for black ambivalence: The nation can't make up its mind whether it loves or loathes us. ''I love the old girl despite her nasty ways. I know she needs me. I think she knows it too. Still, she can be so difficult at times. So ornery and ungrateful. Cruel on occasion. Wicked. Inflicting pain and tribulation just for the heck of it, it seems. Yet every time, just as I am about to collapse under her tiresome demands or explode with rage from her abuse, she pulls me to her bosom and rocks me with promises. One moment I am her curse, the next her beloved.''
Mathis neatly sums up a view of America from its darker side that many whites have never confronted. During July 4 celebrations, many blacks spurn the holiday altogether, because the freedom celebrated is segregated by skin color, even class at times. They resonate with Langston Hughes' plaintive poem, ''Let America Be America Again,'' when he says, ''America never was America to me/. . .(There's never been equality for me,/Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free.').''
Other blacks are torn. On the one hand, they completely resonate with their bitterly disappointed brothers and sisters. On the other hand, they acknowledge that black blood, sweat and tears have built this country. Hence, they echo Martin Luther King Jr., when he declared, ''I ain't goin' nowhere.'' King was responding, perhaps, to mean-spirited critics who would dare deny blacks who fought for the nation's freedom their right to criticize America in love and as a gesture of profound patriotism. Such critics use a pat line that is truly trite: ''If you don't like America, go back to where you came from.'' But as Mathis says of blacks, ''Most of us--91 percent--were born and have lived only here.''
I realize everybody's nerves are extremely jangled since 9/11. But that's no excuse to demand silence or suppression of dissent as a sign of loyalty. It's even more a reason to embrace the freedom of expression that pushed the forefathers to leave tyranny and embrace democracy.
That's why Mathis' book is timely and important. It is a critical engagement with the social, political, economic and racial forces that conspire to keep the nation bitterly divided and radically unjust. In 15 chapters, Mathis examines the racial landscape--including unconscious white racism, prejudice in the classroom, inequality in financial institutions, the racially charged rhetoric of self-help, promotion of Eurocentric values, crime and unequal punishment, affirmative action and the like. These factors pit majority culture, with its often unexamined assumptions, against minority culture, with its often unheeded arguments.
Mathis is critical but not hopeless about America.
''Of course I realize her neurosis is dangerous and that I should probably run off. That would show her. But I am a sucker for the good in her, which is a good too good to leave. So here I stay, battered but bewitched. What can I say? She is my country, my home,'' she writes.
But Mathis is a hard-headed, clear-eyed realist when it comes to race and country. ''Yet black Americans, descendants of the stolen Africans, still do not have equal footing with white Americans who share with us a nation. This is our home, but we do not enjoy its full range of comforts.''
Now chew on that as you eat your holiday barbecue.
Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of religious studies at DePaul University.
--------------------
Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 5 July 1852
Occasion: Meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery
Society, Rochester Hall, Rochester, N.Y. To illustrate the full shame of
slavery, Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties of
the nation -- the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles of
liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth of July, a
day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his
audience of liberty's unfinished business.
Editorial note: Footnotes from the source copy have been placed
immediately following their respective paragraphs.
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
View
off-site links for
this era
Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address
this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have.
I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any
assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do
this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of
my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires
much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that
apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust,
however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my
appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had
in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing
on the present occasion.
1
The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July
oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is
true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and
to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their
familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems
to free me from embarrassment.
2
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform
and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable ? and the
difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by
no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment
as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I
have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with
any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I
have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and
trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them
before you.
3
"May [the
reformer] not
hope that high
lessons of wisdom,
of justice and of
truth, will yet give
direction to her
destiny? Were the
nation older, the
patriot's heart
might be sadder,
and the
reformer's brow
heavier. . . . There
is consolation in
the thought that
America is
young."
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the
birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom.
This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.
It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great
deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act,
and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of
your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76
years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young.
Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck
in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for
individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to
this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career,
still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so.
There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark
clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with
angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat
lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the
impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of
wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were
the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's
brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its
prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that
America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels,
worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and
stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth
with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and
bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil
and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old
channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be
turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered
branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the
sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.
4
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the
associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that, 76
years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and
title of your "sovereign people" (in which you now glory) was not then
born. You were under the British Crown . Your fathers esteemed the
English Government as the home government; and England as the
fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable
distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives,
impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations,
as, in its mature judgement, it deemed wise, right and proper.
5
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this
day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts,
presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom
and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in
their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust,
unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be
quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of
those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration
of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would,
certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived
during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right,
and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the
dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny
of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but
there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the
cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted
in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To
side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and
with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one
which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty
may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to
proceed.
6
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home
government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly
sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a
decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly
unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw
themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet
they persevered. They were not the men to look back.
7
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the
storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the
chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British
statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British
Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the
unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were
drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions
complained of.
8
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by
England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present rulers.
9
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and
if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt
themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their
colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for
oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from
the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this
distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been
intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
10
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have
a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no
matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by
it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the
stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this
sort of change they are always strongly in favor.
11
These people were called tories in the days of your fathers; and the
appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more
modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in
our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.
12
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and
powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it,
the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.
13
On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay
of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful
idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a
resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day,
whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and
help my story if I read it.
14
"Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free
and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the
British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State
of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved."
15
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and
to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours;
and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July
is the first great fact in your nation's history ? the very ring-bolt in the
chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
16
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate
and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of
Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so,
indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving
principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all
places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
17
From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds
may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the
leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken,
and all is lost. Cling to this day ? cling to it, and to its principles, with the
grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
18
The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an
interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar
circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special
attractiveness.
19
The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and
sublime.
20
The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant
number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war.
The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness
unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such
as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order
and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many
days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers
declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.
21
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this
republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men.
They were great men too ? great enough to give fame to a great age. It
does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of
truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not,
certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great
deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes,
and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will
unite with you to honor their memory.
22
They loved their country better than their own private interests; and,
though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that
it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command
respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man
whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives,
their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their
admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.
23
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful
submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from
agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew
its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With
them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty
and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well
cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and
generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with
these degenerate times.
24
How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements!
How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond
the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future.
They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their
defence. Mark them!
25
Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in
the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking
world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly
comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume,
wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of
this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious
patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and
freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which
has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
26
Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met
with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave
exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even
Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife
and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a
thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are
preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and
multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of
a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal
interests nation's jubilee.
27
Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led
to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You
could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in
which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The
causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown
have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common
schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and
thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as
household words. They form the staple of your national poetry and
eloquence.
28
I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar
with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a
national trait ? perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever
makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had
cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering
Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely
left in American hands.
29
I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen
whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be
disputed than mine!
30
THE PRESENT.
My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The
accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.
31
"Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead."
32
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the
present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which
can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the
important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work,
and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do
your work. You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your
fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no
right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover
your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom
and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their
own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and
remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for
the children of Jacob to boast, we have "Abraham to our father," when
they had long lost Abraham's faith and spirit. That people contented
themselves under the shadow of Abraham's great name, while they
repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that
a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you
that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets,
and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? Washington could not die till
he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the
price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men,
shout ? "We have Washington to our father." Alas! that it should be so;
yet so it is.
33
"The evil that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft' interred with their bones."
34
"What have I, or
those I represent,
to do with your
national
independence?"
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to
speak here to-day? 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?
35
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."
36
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the
disparity between us. I 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 life 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 to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And
let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation
whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of
the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take
up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
37
"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 I do not
remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
38
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultous joy, I hear the
mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,
are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach
them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children
of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my
tongue 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 4th 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
judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a
slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
39
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and
denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause
would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain
there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would
you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this
country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That
point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves
acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They
acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave.
There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed
by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the
punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white
man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the
slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being?
July 2, 2002
BY MICHAEL ERIC DYSON
As the country celebrates its 226th birthday in a couple of days, it's a good time to reflect on a brilliant, engaging and utterly honest new book whose title says it all, Yet a Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel At Home. Authored by syndicated columnist and social critic Deborah Mathis, Yet a Stranger probes the ambivalence blacks feel in being loyal but tortured citizens of a nation whose promise is bigger than its practice.
The first words of Mathis' first chapter, titled ''Which Way to the Promised Land?'' capture the reason for black ambivalence: The nation can't make up its mind whether it loves or loathes us. ''I love the old girl despite her nasty ways. I know she needs me. I think she knows it too. Still, she can be so difficult at times. So ornery and ungrateful. Cruel on occasion. Wicked. Inflicting pain and tribulation just for the heck of it, it seems. Yet every time, just as I am about to collapse under her tiresome demands or explode with rage from her abuse, she pulls me to her bosom and rocks me with promises. One moment I am her curse, the next her beloved.''
Mathis neatly sums up a view of America from its darker side that many whites have never confronted. During July 4 celebrations, many blacks spurn the holiday altogether, because the freedom celebrated is segregated by skin color, even class at times. They resonate with Langston Hughes' plaintive poem, ''Let America Be America Again,'' when he says, ''America never was America to me/. . .(There's never been equality for me,/Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free.').''
Other blacks are torn. On the one hand, they completely resonate with their bitterly disappointed brothers and sisters. On the other hand, they acknowledge that black blood, sweat and tears have built this country. Hence, they echo Martin Luther King Jr., when he declared, ''I ain't goin' nowhere.'' King was responding, perhaps, to mean-spirited critics who would dare deny blacks who fought for the nation's freedom their right to criticize America in love and as a gesture of profound patriotism. Such critics use a pat line that is truly trite: ''If you don't like America, go back to where you came from.'' But as Mathis says of blacks, ''Most of us--91 percent--were born and have lived only here.''
I realize everybody's nerves are extremely jangled since 9/11. But that's no excuse to demand silence or suppression of dissent as a sign of loyalty. It's even more a reason to embrace the freedom of expression that pushed the forefathers to leave tyranny and embrace democracy.
That's why Mathis' book is timely and important. It is a critical engagement with the social, political, economic and racial forces that conspire to keep the nation bitterly divided and radically unjust. In 15 chapters, Mathis examines the racial landscape--including unconscious white racism, prejudice in the classroom, inequality in financial institutions, the racially charged rhetoric of self-help, promotion of Eurocentric values, crime and unequal punishment, affirmative action and the like. These factors pit majority culture, with its often unexamined assumptions, against minority culture, with its often unheeded arguments.
Mathis is critical but not hopeless about America.
''Of course I realize her neurosis is dangerous and that I should probably run off. That would show her. But I am a sucker for the good in her, which is a good too good to leave. So here I stay, battered but bewitched. What can I say? She is my country, my home,'' she writes.
But Mathis is a hard-headed, clear-eyed realist when it comes to race and country. ''Yet black Americans, descendants of the stolen Africans, still do not have equal footing with white Americans who share with us a nation. This is our home, but we do not enjoy its full range of comforts.''
Now chew on that as you eat your holiday barbecue.
Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of religious studies at DePaul University.
--------------------
Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 5 July 1852
Occasion: Meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery
Society, Rochester Hall, Rochester, N.Y. To illustrate the full shame of
slavery, Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties of
the nation -- the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles of
liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth of July, a
day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his
audience of liberty's unfinished business.
Editorial note: Footnotes from the source copy have been placed
immediately following their respective paragraphs.
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
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Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address
this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have.
I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any
assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do
this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of
my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires
much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that
apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust,
however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my
appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had
in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing
on the present occasion.
1
The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July
oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is
true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and
to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their
familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems
to free me from embarrassment.
2
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform
and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable ? and the
difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by
no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment
as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I
have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with
any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I
have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and
trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them
before you.
3
"May [the
reformer] not
hope that high
lessons of wisdom,
of justice and of
truth, will yet give
direction to her
destiny? Were the
nation older, the
patriot's heart
might be sadder,
and the
reformer's brow
heavier. . . . There
is consolation in
the thought that
America is
young."
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the
birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom.
This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.
It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great
deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act,
and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of
your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76
years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young.
Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck
in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for
individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to
this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career,
still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so.
There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark
clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with
angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat
lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the
impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of
wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were
the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's
brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its
prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that
America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels,
worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and
stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth
with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and
bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil
and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old
channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be
turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered
branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the
sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.
4
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the
associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that, 76
years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and
title of your "sovereign people" (in which you now glory) was not then
born. You were under the British Crown . Your fathers esteemed the
English Government as the home government; and England as the
fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable
distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives,
impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations,
as, in its mature judgement, it deemed wise, right and proper.
5
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this
day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts,
presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom
and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in
their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust,
unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be
quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of
those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration
of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would,
certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived
during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right,
and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the
dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny
of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but
there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the
cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted
in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To
side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and
with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one
which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty
may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to
proceed.
6
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home
government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly
sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a
decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly
unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw
themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet
they persevered. They were not the men to look back.
7
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the
storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the
chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British
statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British
Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the
unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were
drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions
complained of.
8
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by
England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present rulers.
9
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and
if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt
themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their
colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for
oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from
the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this
distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been
intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
10
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have
a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no
matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by
it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the
stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this
sort of change they are always strongly in favor.
11
These people were called tories in the days of your fathers; and the
appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more
modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in
our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.
12
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and
powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it,
the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.
13
On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay
of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful
idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a
resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day,
whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and
help my story if I read it.
14
"Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free
and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the
British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State
of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved."
15
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and
to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours;
and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July
is the first great fact in your nation's history ? the very ring-bolt in the
chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
16
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate
and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of
Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so,
indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving
principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all
places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
17
From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds
may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the
leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken,
and all is lost. Cling to this day ? cling to it, and to its principles, with the
grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
18
The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an
interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar
circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special
attractiveness.
19
The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and
sublime.
20
The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant
number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war.
The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness
unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such
as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order
and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many
days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers
declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.
21
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this
republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men.
They were great men too ? great enough to give fame to a great age. It
does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of
truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not,
certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great
deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes,
and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will
unite with you to honor their memory.
22
They loved their country better than their own private interests; and,
though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that
it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command
respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man
whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives,
their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their
admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.
23
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful
submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from
agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew
its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With
them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty
and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well
cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and
generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with
these degenerate times.
24
How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements!
How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond
the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future.
They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their
defence. Mark them!
25
Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in
the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking
world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly
comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume,
wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of
this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious
patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and
freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which
has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
26
Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met
with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave
exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even
Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife
and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a
thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are
preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and
multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of
a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal
interests nation's jubilee.
27
Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led
to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You
could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in
which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The
causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown
have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common
schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and
thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as
household words. They form the staple of your national poetry and
eloquence.
28
I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar
with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a
national trait ? perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever
makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had
cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering
Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely
left in American hands.
29
I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen
whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be
disputed than mine!
30
THE PRESENT.
My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The
accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.
31
"Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead."
32
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the
present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which
can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the
important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work,
and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do
your work. You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your
fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no
right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover
your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom
and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their
own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and
remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for
the children of Jacob to boast, we have "Abraham to our father," when
they had long lost Abraham's faith and spirit. That people contented
themselves under the shadow of Abraham's great name, while they
repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that
a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you
that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets,
and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? Washington could not die till
he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the
price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men,
shout ? "We have Washington to our father." Alas! that it should be so;
yet so it is.
33
"The evil that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft' interred with their bones."
34
"What have I, or
those I represent,
to do with your
national
independence?"
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to
speak here to-day? 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?
35
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."
36
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the
disparity between us. I 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 life 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 to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And
let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation
whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of
the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take
up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
37
"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 I do not
remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
38
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultous joy, I hear the
mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,
are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach
them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children
of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my
tongue 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 4th 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
judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a
slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
39
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and
denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause
would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain
there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would
you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this
country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That
point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves
acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They
acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave.
There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed
by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the
punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white
man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the
slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being?
