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THE ROOTS OF BLACK CONCSCIOUSNESS, Black Nationalism vs. Imperialistic Heritage
"What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of 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 licence; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgiving, with all your religous 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." -Frederick Douglas
MY TAKE: "WOW", I never knew Douglas felt this way, in all my readings by him, never did I come across something like this. Often my perspective come early July, I never would have thought ancestors back then had such eloquence in illustrating this point. Goes to show, truth transcend time... Funny how we might learn a thing or two about Douglas in school and have his image in our faces as youth, but his ideas (at least the more contrversial ones) are kept out of view. Makes me want to go to an elementary school and tell the children to stop pasting the American flag together and memorizing songs like "United We Stand" (which i still can't forget by the way) as I had to.
More importantly, I wonder how a group of people who struggle the rest of the year for racial equality embrace the ideals of "celebrating OUR nation" when they know the history and know the hypocrisy that goes along with it. I guess S.M. Etkins really knew what he was talking about...
"In being recruited as a slave, the negroe was not merely severed from his own culture, he was psychologically shocked by the process, so that he was bound to become dependent upon his master and his master's culture and social system in every possible way. Having lost the means of fending for himself in the world, he was forced into a Sambo stance, doing what his master bade him, being apathetically grateful for any kindness, and not even aspiring to any kind of independent life." -S.M. Eikins
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