Independence Day has Never Felt Like Mine

by Trish Hosein

Independence Day has never felt like mine. This isn’t true of all immigrants, or people of color (immigrants and people of color are not monolithic) but it is true for me.

A lot of my friends, mostly my white friends, are now learning about things like Juneteenth, the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the police force (*formally known as the slave patrol). Through this learning, the myth of America is being dismantled and their eyes are being opened. But I got to walk into this room, eyes wide. This is one of the benefits of being an immigrant. Yes, there is a mythical America as an immigrant, but it is more like the mythological gods of the Greeks and Romans. We are aware of their power but also their greed and pettiness and ability to enact violence on us capriciously. 

It makes sense that as we collectively unravel the America we have learned about in school, how our history has been revised and softened for the sake of white fragility, if this 4th of July feels unsettling to you, the way it always has to me. While we know the sins of our forefathers peripherally, in direct line of sight the less the 4th of July signifies freedom, and the more it symbolizes hypocrisy. 

The colonists and writers of the Declaration of Independence were aware of this hypocrisy. They were called out on it. Opponents ridiculed them for saying that taxation without representation made colonists slaves to Britain, while colonists were enslaving people themselves. Thomas Jefferson even addressed the evils of slavery in his original draft, and later took it out. People like to excuse the actions of the founders because their actions were typical of the time, as if this means they did not know it was wrong. But they did, and ultimately given the choice between idealism and money, they chose money. This is how a nation was built on a contradiction of words and actions.  

The celebration of America’s independence hinges on the assumption that we, and the world, are better because of it. But are we? 

If the United States never declared independence, slavery would have likely been abolished a full three decades earlier in 1834, with the Slavery Abolition act that banned the practice in all British colonies. We are playing with counterfactual here, so we cannot say this for sure, but it has always been hard for me to celebrate a day that may have imprisoned millions of people for an additional 30 years. If you think that 30 years of slavery for millions is a fair trade for a country’s independence, then you have not yet fully accepted the humanity of every single enslaved person.

The formation of the U.S. also meant the genocide of the land’s native people. As climate change looms and our window to fix it closes; as billionaires hoard resources and most citizens are a 400 dollar setback away from bankruptcy,  who are we to say that this land would not have been better off if left to its original owners?

In reality, the Declaration of Independence did nothing for anyone but white men, which I am not. In fact, families like mine were not even able to legally come to the United States until almost 200 years later with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

So, as Frederick Douglass said in his speech What to the Slave is 4th of July? “The fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

If your response to this is something along the lines of, “if you don’t like it here then leave” believe me you are not the first or last to express that sentiment. If you are white you are allowed to criticize your country. If you are white, a partial ownership is assumed. But If you are not, you are a perpetual foreigner. No matter how long you exist here your existence is leased.

But I want to make it clear that I love this country. I love this country with a painful unrequited love that I think many immigrants and POC are familiar with. I love my country even though my country doesn’t love me. If I didn’t, why would I fight so hard for it to live up to its promise? As Senator Cory Booker said “If this country hasn’t broken your heart, you probably don’t love Her enough.”

How do I separate America’s sins from America? How do I love this country that I so openly and often critique?

America is an idea. All countries are. Invisible borders and paper money. And while the idea that “all men are created equal” was not at all revelatory at the time, the words still touch me when followed in the doctrine, “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

The idea of America is something I still believe in. I do not claim this day as my own but I claim this country as my own. I do not revere the founding fathers, but I revere those who have fought since then to perfect this democracy.

This year, as news anchors describe the looting of a Target as something violent and primal and un-American, while revisiting the Boston Tea Party with fondness, I will sit in the discomfort of America’s continued hypocrisy. I will celebrate this thing that is not quite mine in hopes of something that could be.

If you choose to celebrate too, maybe you can do so in the way I’ve learned to: not looking back, but looking forward. Maybe we celebrate this Declaration as a blueprint of an America that is still in progress. Maybe we celebrate us. 

We are America in progress. We have not finished building her yet. Keep building.

Written by Trish Hosein