There was a conspicuous complaint across social media last weekend. Perhaps you noticed it. Americans skated right past the holy-smokes-we-can-get-together-again feeling of gratitude and patriotism that we so often associate with Independence Day and skipped right ahead to a variety of complaints and arguments.
Some were people who admonished their neighbors to please not set off fireworks in their neighborhoods for the sake of their dogs and PTSD-suffering veterans for whom the evening of pop pop pop is far from enjoyable. I get that. My pets hate it and my concerns about that fall on deaf ears (oh, the irony).
Perhaps a sign of the times (things getting into a more “normal” rhythm) is seen in how we are squabbling about politics. Americans love to argue about politics – that’s who we are, but this year, I noticed some of the rhetoric that seemed to bring more heat than illumination.
For example, this tweet from Congresswoman Cori Bush, who represents St. Louis, Missouri:
“When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people. This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free.”
That’s a hell of a statement coming from a member of Congress.
First, there’s an anger, a frustration and a cry for recognition in that statement that has a basis in history that’s been told largely by white men. The fact is – white men established this country and institutionalized protections for their interests and their property, which (in their time) included the human beings that they held as slaves.
To look back with only a hazy, blurred view of that and suggest that it was a glorious time for all Americans is to miss the much more important point: We are not yet the country we aspire to be, but we are, in fact, traveling on a progressive path in the direction of justice.
If Rep. Bush were to read my little column, I would hope to convey to her – I hear you. The perspective you’re bringing is valuable. I hope that you can hear me, however.
No country has a history like ours – warts and all. I can think of no country that has so persistently struggled to expand civil rights and representative government as much as the United States has. The transformation of our society since I was born in the late 1950s is breathtaking, but the profound leap we have made after the George Floyd lynching cannot yet be quantified.
Here’s the core of what I’m noticing: We’re talking about it. I mean really talking about it. We’ve heard for 30 years that “America should have a conversation about race” and nobody knew exactly what that was except for a pandering statement to make the subject go away. It makes white people uncomfortable.
Being uncomfortable in this context is a good thing, a necessary thing. It means we might finally be getting down to the real business of making our society better. This is a hard dialog – a steep learning curve and a struggle that we cannot pretend to solve quickly or to everyone’s satisfaction. The outrageous process by which UNC’s Board of Trustees botched the hiring of Nikole Hannah-Jones is more than enough proof that knocking down Silent Sam represented a small step in confronting the university’s racist history, not a giant leap of reversal as some might have wished for.
I admire Hannah-Jones’s decision to join the faculty at Howard University. Our university deserves that slap in the face. The debacle that has unfolded related to her tenure here has to have been especially, pointedly painful to her. UNC recruited her, then the BOT treated her like an intruder – because she dared to write the (Pulitzer prize-winning) story of slavery in America on the 400th anniversary of its arrival here in 1619.
The journalists coming out of Howard in the next 20 years are going to be top of the line and UNC will be, at best, a distant second.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97-9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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