“Black Lives Matter. Race matters. We need each other. What is mine to do?”

It’s a different fourth of July. No parades, no big gatherings for fireworks to celebrate America’s freedom. And perhaps most importantly a growing recognition that America is not free until all Americans are free.

Holidays are aspirational. The Fourth of July is hyperbolic in its aspiration. We celebrate the American Revolution and the freedom from tyranny and oppression that our forefathers and foremothers sought. 

The freedom sought was not available equally to all. Read the story of Lewis and Clark and their bold adventure to discover the West. In 1804, President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to learn about the West. Part of the agenda was to scout the Native people so the United States could, through friendship or attack, take their land. All were not free then.

Africans were enslaved as early as 1508 in Puerto Rico and part of the Spanish takeover of St Augustine, FL later in the 1500s. In 1619, in Point Comfort (ironic name) near Jamestown, the first Africans were enslaved in the British colonies.

While most white folks are vaguely aware of the history of slavery, it is not personal. It was not our backs being beaten or our mothers or sisters raped. So, we treat it like an unfortunate piece of history to be quickly forgotten.

Unfortunately, we cannot move forward until we admit we all have a hand in continuing the oppression of people of African descent, people of color, and people different than us. We are not equal until we are all free.

Southwest Airlines when it revolutionized the airline industry promoted its low airfares with: ”Now you are free to move around the country.” That was a great promise, but not true for all Americans. Ask people of color about the experience of security in an airport and traveling to an unknown community. We aren’t all free to travel.

Last Sunday The Washington Post included an opinion article on how the owner of the Washington NFL team refused to hire African-American players until 1962. As a Washington DC resident, I was not aware the local team was the last in the league to integrate. It simply never came up in any of the conversations I was in.

As I listen and read with new awareness and a desire to wake up, there is much about our country and the lack of equal treatment for all that I have ignored or accepted as “the way it is”.

After the George Floyd murder, an activist African-American friend of mine told me that her message to her family, friends, and professional colleagues is the same as it has been –” focus on reparations.” I wonder what she means and what that means to me. It helps me to think of reparation as making amends. To amend is to change behavior.

For me, a first step in making amends is to admit harm has been done. Conscious and unconscious bias and a culture organized around white superiority has sustained overt and covert racism. It is uncomfortable for me to admit I am part of that system. I am.

Freedom Day in 2020 is an opportunity to examine the truth that when one of us is not free, all are not free. Could it be a call for each of us to increase our awareness of inequity and work to advance the aspiration of freedom for all?

This post was first published on July 9, 2020.