A Southern Black Girl's Reflection on the Fourth Of July

The fourth of July was never really strange for me. I saw what it meant to others, but nothing could ever cloud what it meant to us. From a blessed distance I saw white men dance around with a beer and lighter in hand while their wives slaved away to make the perfect ambrosia salad. Their kids threw back hotdogs faster than a machine could.

It didn’t phase me because in my house, patriotism meant “I wish a muthafucka would.”

Patriotism meant “my people built this country” and “try me.” An American flag was an ode to Grace Wisher and Mary McLeod Bethune. My household sounded like Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock 1969 with the spirit of Whitney Houston’s 1991 Star Spangled Banner rendition. My house was Black, but we also were American with an asterisk on what that meant.

When Beyoncé Bowl went viral in the leftist political sphere back in December, I saw the unapologetically Black culture I was raised in become accused of being American propaganda. People who hadn’t taken more than a field trip past the Mason-Dixie line were painting my culture to the world as being a facet of white supremacy. I tired myself trying to explain why blonde hair, an American flag, and a horse don’t mean the same thing on a Houston bred Black woman as they do on Mary Sue from East Texas. I felt angry that the rage of the state of the political world was being unleashed on a people that have empowered the movement work of the world right from the south.

To my people, an American flag has never been a symbol of 1776, it’s been a symbol of Black blood spilt across confederate lines. If you asked the parents of Opal Lee how they felt about the Fourth, they’d tell you about the Black ass parades we hold in our Texas neighborhoods and the tradition of riding your horses through the blockaded streets. They, and many others, would tell you about how they embody America and why they refuse to let anyone take that away from them. The Black south is built different. Even when you see red white and blue they run in a different shade and bleed from a lower line. It’s not “patriotism” it’s patriotism. For many its a Juneteenth After Party.

Growing up in this way before venturing into the northern suburban culture as a college student in Washington, D.C. and Boston put me at cultural odds. Even among Black communities up there, they see hated where I saw home. They see country as an attempt to fit into the system where I see the land my people fought for rightfully claimed under my feet. I don’t fault them for what they don’t know, but I’ve come to struggle with how their eyes see what I love. I fight back against the nationalists hellbent on enforcing a shade of whiteness they can’t even adhere to, but I also reject their right to steal the culture that made home home. While they see “Don’t Tread on Me” as their heritage, I see it as my repurposed warning; “I wish a muthafucka would” shows between the lines when my eyes squint. I see what they view as their strength to be their downfall, and my people’s gain.

All in all, I navigate conflicting feelings every day. Regardless of whether you believe in a alternate Fourth or disdain for any thought of the day, all those feelings are a part movement work. As I sit and type my ramblings on my computer (really my phone) that a few will read, I imagine what patriotism means and whether patriotism is a term at all. I think to what my mother taught me as a Black woman raised at the intersection of Compton and Watts, and how my dad lectured me as a British Nigerian Immigrant who started a new life in his teens. I sit with all of these feelings, questioning my own potential indoctrination while sifting through my familial pride and ask myself, does a firework light up the sky because it is in darkness, or because it contrasts the dark and shows us what happens when power turns into light?

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