Independence Day.

It was the 4th of July in 1776 when the 13 European Colonies in North America read the Declaration of Indepenence to announce their freedom from Great Britain and call themselves the United States of America. Americans were finally able to live without being told what to do by the Brits. However, if you were Black, there was nothing to celebrate because you were a slave and the Declaration didn't apply to you.

No, not you. You were livestock.

Celebrating the 4th of July while Black, is much like being Black and celebrating Cinco de Mayo or being Black and celebrating St. Patrick's Day; it has nothing to do with you, but you're invited because you're here. It's celebrating another peoples' culture that, historically speaking, Blacks had no part of because they intentionally kept Blacks out of it. Sure, there were some Black people that made a name for themselves in the American Revolution, but generally, they were enlisted as meatshields to take bullets to the face for white soldiers or to go in place of their masters' sons so they wouldn't have to send them off to war; they were an extra resource when manpower was low. Those that voluntarily enlisted did so because they were promised freedom, which of course, white Americans reneged and most of them never got it.

So what did happen to Black slaves who were "captured" by the Britains in the American Revolutionary War?

The Britains freed them. Some took their new found freedom and fled to Nova Scotia, some stayed and fought with the Britains against the Americans. All they knew was if they were recaptured by the Americans, slavery and torture was certain, so they took whatever chances they could get to not get sent back. There was nothing for them to gain by going back to white America. Nothing.

So why do Black Americans keep celebrating white American culture that has always proven to be an enemy against them?

Generational Stockholm Syndrome. Slavery damaged the slaves psychologically and then that was handed down generation after generation. Even in the Revolutionary days, white Americans as a group, were never an ally to the Black slaves and in fact, it was Britain who abolished slavery, long before the United States did and even offered freedom and land to Black American slaves who managed to flee their white American masters. The white people in this country, as a population, was never an ally to us. Ever. Britain, however was. Not that that makes Britains any better, but at least they seemed to have had a moral center at that point in time. In fact, when it came to slavery, it was Britain who shook their finger at America for not extending the same quality of life to slaves that they enjoyed for themselves. So if anything, Black slaves should have been fighting with Britian, not the United States, but hey, you know Stockholm.

What did white Americans offer the slaves?

They offered land and freedom, but many never got it. As usual, Blacks were just expendable resources and they needed some lie to entice them into enlisting. So they offered the Black slaves a possiblity of something but slavery was the most likely outcome. Ironically, it was Britain who actually freed the first American slaves during the American Revolutionary War ... not Lincoln in the 1860s. Altho being only in the thousands. It was the Britians who helped the Black slaves escape the white American "masters". It was Britain who were the liberators of Black slaves' holocaust at that point in time, not the white Americans. They were Hitlers.

Now don't get me wrong, I am certainly sure that there were some racist Britains, but the general consensus between the Britains when they came across slaves was to free them, unlike the Americans whose consensus was to keep them slaves, and that's exactly what white Americans did after the war. Rounded up all surviving Black soldiers who were not free men, and put them right back into slavery.

In conclusion, Black Americans should be celebrating Britain's attempts to liberate the slaves, not celebrating the United States' attempts to keep them there. It's like the cops say in those really terrible old movies, "Yous can either make this easy or hard on yoiself" and that is exactly what it's like being Black in the United States. White people have their history and we have ours. You can make it hard by educating yourself about the truth of American history and know that the United States is full of bullshit while everyone else walks around with their rose-colored glasses on. Or, you can either make it easy on yourself and completely ignore all of the raping, torture, lynching, murder, stealing, lying, propaganda, assassinations, mass incarcerations, police brutality, discrimination, redlining , forced poverty, racism, drugs, guns, crimes against humanity and anything else that white people have reached down into the darkest depths of their souls to find the most sadistic things you could ever do to an innocent person from every generation of Black people from the 1500s to 2018.

Those really are the only two options.

Well, there is a third but

But anyway, thanks Britain for at least trying.

Sources:

Wikipedia: American Revolutionary War

Jamestown Settlement & American Revolution Museum at Yorktown

Wikipedia: African Americans in the Revolutionary War

Wikipedia: African Americans in the Revolutionary War

---

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://shaunie.nyc/on-the-4th-of-july-black-americans-should-be-celebrating-britain-not-the-united-states/

---