Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 14
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
Happy Friday! As we head into Fourth of July weekend, I hope that you take some time to read some of the articles in today’s newsletter, particularly Frederick Douglass’ infamous speech, ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’
Today’s Hot Takes section is simply some of my favorite excerpts from the speech.
In today’s news:
Eugene City Council has started a conversation around reparations and truth and reconciliation.
A middle school drama teacher in Illinois has filed a discrimination lawsuit against her school district alleging that mandated antiracist training is discriminatory to her and her white students.
A new inclusive economic dashboard from George Washington University shows that 69.8% of D.C.’s small businesses are white-owned, compared to just 5.2% that are owned by Black residents. Washington D.C.’s population is 50 percent Black.
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
Baltimore Sun: Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July speech: a reminder of the American tradition of critique
Wall Street Journal: Federal Lawsuits Say Antiracism and Critical Race Theory in Schools Violate Constitution
Washington Post: How the meticulous bookkeeping of two sisters led to reparations for Black people across the country
Movement for Black Lives: Reparations Now Toolkit (Published in 2020)
Urban Institute: Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America (Published in 2017)
The Root: What If White People Are Wrong?
Forbes: Corporate America: It’s not too late to honor your racial justice pledges
The Hill: Trump attacks Milley over critical race theory, calls for resignation
The Economist: American fried chicken has its origins in slavery
LA Times: Founding Fathers as Founding Debtors: How some of them used slaves as collateral'
USA Today: Cannabis reform? It's the right time for full federal legalization to help economy and people
WBUR: Ibram X. Kendi Walks His Talk With 'Be Anti-Racist' Podcast
Regional News
Eugene Weekly: Eugene City Council Talks Reparations
Black Enterprise: MEGACHURCH PASTOR ISSUES $200K REPARATIONS PAYMENTS EACH TO SURVIVORS OF TULSA MASSACRE
DCist: Economic Inclusiveness Tool Reflects Large Racial Wealth Gap In D.C. Region
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The idea of reparations is not controversial until the conversation turns to Black people
Texas Tribune: A critical culture war over how to teach history
Hot Takes
Excerpts from Frederick Douglass’ ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July'
“What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.”
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity … a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”
“Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.”