John --

The Fourth of July is typically a time for reflective celebration, or perhaps celebrative reflection. 

Year after year, Americans celebrate how far we have come since the Independence movement which birthed the nation. We reflect on our present moment and consider how far we must still strive if we are to realize the ideals which the Enlightenment thinkers first sketched, and which anti-colonial and abolitionist struggles re-asserted in the subsequent decades. The Haitian revolutionaries reminded the world of the French colonialists’ incomplete application of Enlightenment universalism. American abolitionists did the same for this nation’s slaveholding aristocracy. 

For all those willing to listen, each iteration of struggle makes loud and clear what must be done.

On this particular Fourth of July, our yearly ritual has taken a decidedly different tone amid a resurgent global pandemic and civilian uprisings. Both these events as well as the insufficient government response has made it clear that our egalitarian society still suffers under the yoke of racism, whether it be racist ideology or racist politics. As has been the case throughout history, the civilian uprisings which emanated from Minneapolis, before spreading throughout and beyond this country, have clarified what must be done. 

There is now a bipartisan consensus: we must strive for anti-racism, as both an ideal as well as a concrete practice and politics.