I am celebrating in Europe, for the second year in a row. And I do really miss the U.S. today. The Fourth is one of my favorite holidays. As kids, we’d always have a big neighborhood BBQ, with the neighbor boys inevitably busting out the ridiculously dangerous fireworks they had purchased days before at one of the Indian reservations outside of Seattle, and plotting ways to make them more dangerous — putting a quarter stick of dynamite in a mini propane tank, for example. Luckily, we had a huge park behind our houses, and there was only one incident in which a decent-sized fire was started in the forest next to the park.
This year, my Fourth of July will be spent watching the World Cup and (obviously) cheering for Italy. So it’s a multi-cultural independence day, which is something that people living in the United States experience pretty often:
On March 25, Astoria was aflutter with blue and white flags, commemorating the 185th anniversary of the beginning of the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire. The next day, Bangladeshi immigrants from Woodside to Bayside marked Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan. And on May 5, Mexicans across the borough loudly celebrated a national holiday that has come to eclipse the country’s actual Independence Day of Sept. 16.
Then there are May 26 (Guyana), Aug. 6 (Bolivia and Jamaica), Aug. 24 (Ukraine) and Sept. 1 (Uzbekistan), to name a few, all observed with that bittersweet mix of homesickness and pride that is the lot of even the most enthusiastic new American.
But July 4 is different. It is a day that looks forward, not back. The aroma of hamburgers hissing on a grill awakens no Old World memory, the swells of “America the Beautiful” no tinge of the past, just a fresh start. And, in an era of cellphones and satellite television that strengthen links to native countries, many say they welcome the day as one when they can exchange their more complex identities borne from straddling two cultures, for just one.
“On the Fourth of July, you forget your country,” said Martha Mariño, 48, of Jackson Heights, who moved to the United States 16 years ago from Bolivia. “You only feel American. You feel more here.”
The Fourth is a good time to remember that we’re a country in progress, and that we’re being molded and shaped by all the different kinds of people who make up our population. It’s also a good time to think about focusing outward a bit more. I walked into work this morning and an Italian co-worker immediately wished me a happy Fourth of July. How many Italian national holidays do I know? None.
It’s also worth examining ideas of patriotism, and what it means to love your country. Does loving a place mean never criticizing it? Assuming that it’s always in the right, and that God blessed it as the greatest nation in the world? Arguing that trying to make it better is tantamount to disloyalty?
I don’t think so. American progressives have an idea of the United States as a country striving for excellence. We know that we have great people, institutions and laws. But we also know that these people, institutions and laws are not perfect, and we care enough to try and make them better.
Most reformers guard their patriotic credentials by moving quickly to the next logical step: that the true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I’d assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world’s first flawless nation.
As the author of this piece points out, the words “All men are created equal” were penned while slavery continued to thrive. This country has gotten better because its citizens have made concerted efforts to move it forward. And while there have always been those who stick steadfastly to tradition, they have been on the losing side of history.
One need only point to the uses that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. made of the core ideas of the Declaration of Independence against slavery and racial injustice to show how the intellectual and moral traditions of the United States operate in favor of continuous reform.
There is, moreover, a distinguished national tradition in which dissident voices identify with the revolutionary aspirations of the republic’s founders. Frederick Douglass, the former slave turned anti-slavery champion, offered the classic text in his 1852 address often published under the title: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
“To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy,” Douglass declared. “Everybody can say it. . . . 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, with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day.”
Yes. A few of those people:
The young men and women who challenged segregation as Freedom Riders in the spring and summer of 1961 are now senior citizens. Last year the photographer Eric Etheridge began searching out and making contemporary portraits of the more than 300 Riders who were arrested and served prison time in his home state of Mississippi. Helen Singleton, 73, and her husband, Robert, 70, who married in 1955 and traveled from California to sit in the whites-only waiting room of the Jackson train station, are among his subjects. Their portraits are shown here along with mug shots taken 45 years ago this month.
Married to a Cause: Helen is an artist and a retired arts administrator, Robert a professor of economics. “It was the defining moment of our lives and our marriage,” Robert says. “We wear our arrest like a badge of honor.”
Richard Steward is a retired public school teacher. “I had a friend whom I’d grown up with, we were running buddies, if you know what I mean. We did a lot of…things together. We lost track of each other, but when I found out about the Freedom Rides, I discovered he was helping organize the effort in New Orleans. I told him I wanted to be a Freedom Rider. ‘You do something nonviolent?’ he said. ‘That’s a laugh.’ I insisted. He said, ‘You’ll need training.’ I said fine. Then he slapped me real hard. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You’ve been trained.'”
Fred Clark is now a retired teacher. “We were testing the interstate travel, federal facilities, the federal law on interstate travel,” he said of the Freedom Ride. “The buses and trains and planes, everything was integrated. But then came the question of the lunch counter. If we’d sit down there and eat, they took the stools up.”
Happy Fourth.
More:
John Kerry on How to Love Your Country
Nina Burleigh on Progressive Patriotism
Howard Zinn on the difference between supporting your country and supporting your government.
Jesse Kornbluth: Saluting the flag, pledging allegiance to the planet.
It’s 6am Eastern Standard Time, so there aren’t a whole lot of Fourth of July posts up yet, except on the professional blogs. As you spot good ones, feel free to leave links in the comments.