Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?
by digby
It’s Frederick Douglass’ birthday today, which means it’s a really good time to play this YouTube of Danny Glover reading the famous 4th of July Speech. Douglass opened the speech by saying “do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?”
“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 thanks-givings, 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. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
My goodness, that was a very uncivil playing of the race card wasn’t it? And downright unpatriotic. We’re good and “they’re” evil, right? After all, it only took a bloody civil war to end the practice of slavery long after the rest of the civilized world had abandoned it. But there has been progress. We don’t enslave African Americans anymore and we do allow them to participate freely in society — as long as they mind their ps and qs we don’t usually gun them down in gas stations. We do imprison as many of them as we can but we’re not perfect. Just exceptional.
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