(ThyBlackMan.com) Just a day after millions of Americans celebrated the “Fourth of You Lie,” our nation got more evidence of the lie we live when we “celebrate” freedom. On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling was killed by White police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in an encounter that was blessedly videotaped. The footage showed a man being shot, even as he was down on the ground. A day later, on July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was shot four times as he attempted to comply with a police officer’s request to provide identification. Diamond Reynolds, his fiancé, videotaped the encounter, as her 4 year-old daughter sat in the backseat.
If patriotic fireworks make you feel warm and fuzzy about our nation, these two videos ought to be enough to throw ice water on them. I am chilled, disgusted, and angered at yet more senseless killings of Black men by police officers, 136 so far this year (about 25.3 percent of all police killings). You ought to read Frederick
Douglass’ speech and understand why those videos leave me with cold antipathy for “my country.” Many things have changed since he delivered this oratorical masterpiece in 1852. Many things have not.
Watching Philando Castile’s blood seep from his body reminds me of our nation’s hypocrisy, and of Douglass’ searing words:
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other 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; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”
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