I grew up watching July 4th celebrations and parades, listening to speeches on freedom and equality, and reading denunciations of tyranny and oppression. I have long felt that my experience of being Black in this, my country, rendered them a kind of lie. And today, that lie camouflages an existential threat to the nation itself.
In his speech about the meaning of July 4th, Frederick Douglass argued that for Black people, Independence Day, more than any other day, exposed the hypocrisy of claims to American liberty, equality, and greatness, when held up against the inequitable treatment they endured.
This hypocrisy gave rise to a centuries-long struggle for inclusion, representation, participation, and fair treatment by political institutions. And it continues as our nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its political founding, and as the Trump administration and other actors seek to roll back our gains. But a new threat is emerging, one whose historical comparison may be the rise of the Confederacy, which sought to end the American experiment.
Unapologetically authoritarian ideas have moved from margin to center in the political spectrum. As I write this, the U.S. Supreme Court continues to eviscerate the federal Voting Rights Act, our pinnacle civil rights achievement. The Trump administration tries to erase Black history and encourages Americans to turn a blind eye to our present inequity. President Trump enacts policies that coincide with, if not cause, Black unemployment to rise. These threats are very familiar to people like me, but the plan behind them is new: it’s about removing democracy altogether.
Dark Enlightenment adherents like Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel, whose influence has risen under Trump, don’t want an equitable democracy. They believe instead in a techno-monarchy run by a national “CEO” whose authority is unquestioned and where the rest of us exist not to think but only to execute. And of course, they see themselves alone as the inner circle of deciders.
The way we mark this 250th national birthday is an exercise toward that authoritarianism: Trump and his base want everyone to mark this July 4th only with revelry. They want to skip the meditation part that is so important to those of us who haven’t had an open door to the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
In the face of all of this, Black people and their allies must not only continue the long fight to inject justice into the system but also step up, as Douglass did, to defend the very existence of those imperfect institutions. We must yet again reimagine a truly inclusive democracy and show how there is room for all of us in it. In a sense, the inauguration of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on June 18 provided a glimpse of that vision and modeled an alternative way for us to celebrate the birth of a truly inclusive nation.
When former First Lady Michelle Obama spoke of the ways we’re tested, and how sometimes we fall short, she was speaking of an imperfect United States where everyone has a place, even when they fail. As she has so often before, the former first lady spoke of how “deep down in our hearts and souls we all know right from wrong, we know selflessness from greed, righteousness from injustice,” addressing the values that established our country even when that country didn’t always live up to them.
Recognizing that our republic is under dire threat from the forces that have bedeviled it since our founding, but knowing that we are part of a centuries-long struggle to realize our ideals: that’s the commemoration I take today, one that, in this moment, I feel truly takes me into account, and one that can sustain me in the coming fight.
John Dobard is vice president of strategy and policy for Catalyst California, a nonprofit that advocates for racial justice. He helps drive the organization’s development and execution of its policy agenda.