Not quite created equal

lewleadbeater.com

notes from the edge

Home

Email Me

				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Not quite created equal				July 11, 2009

It was a rather jarring article in the Gazette on the Fourth of July that caught my eye, if only because of its ironic application to the day on which we were celebrating our independence from Great Britain.

According to reporter Amanda Kerr, the sign designating the future location on Scotland Street of a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr had been vandalized for the fourth time in two years. Willie Parker, the president of Friends of African-American History and the driving force behind the future memorial, thinks that the vandalism is being purposely done.

While the police have no suspects in the case, and the motive behind the vandalism is unclear, Parker’s assumption that on the basis of frequency something is racially amiss is not an unreasonable one.

Quite frankly, given this nation’s murky history relative to the treatment of blacks, Native Americans and other minorities who defy our somewhat picaresque notion of what this country is all about, I have severe reservations about the patriotic fervor that drives what is at best an arbitrary July holiday.

While the Declaration of Independence was issued, thanks to a printer’s date imprinted on the document, and passed on the Fourth of July, Congress actually voted on July 2, 1776 to declare independence from Britain. And it may not have been until August 2 that the actual signing of the Declaration occurred. Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration was presented to Congress on June 28.

Even more disillusioning is the fact that, if the Fourth of July falls on a Saturday, we celebrate on July 3, if not July 6 as well, so that we can work all this into a four-day weekend. But we never celebrate July 2, on which the actual declaration took place.

Go figure.

What’s important, however, is not when we celebrate the holiday, but what we’re celebrating. Why is it that we drag out the flags, set off fireworks and patriotically give lip service to America’s stupendous performance relative to other nations of the world? Of what are we so proud?

If our pride has to do with socking it to the British and dumping their tea in Boston Harbor, why were we so enamored of dragging Queen Elizabeth and her eerie consort over to our Jamestown celebration to be swathed in preternatural posies and pixilated puffery? Why were we bowing and scraping to the descendants of the hapless hooligans we did in at Yorktown?

What we should be celebrating is Jefferson’s Declaration itself and the notion that all men are created equal and have been endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Remember life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

But that can’t be right either. Can any of us really say that in this country all men, to say nothing of women, are created equal? Quite beyond the highly unequal notion of slavery that we found acceptable, can we really say today that racism is dead? If so, why are we still arguing about affirmative action and firemen’s tests in New Haven?

If all men are created equal, why was Martin Luther King Jr. gunned down for promoting racial equality? And why is a sign indicating the location of a memorial to him in Williamsburg being fractured and broken so frequently?

If all men are created equal and assured the unalienable right to pursue happiness, why are gays denied the right to marry or Native Americans enclosed in squalid, alcohol-inducing reservations?

If all men are created equal, why are there thousands more blacks and Latinos in prison than whites?

If all men are created equal, why are there 45 million people in this country without health insurance? Or over two million homeless? Or thousands living in tent cities because their homes have been foreclosed?

If all men are created equal, why is there such an enormous happiness and liberty lacuna between those born rich and those born to struggling single mothers? Why are bank and investment corporation CEOs getting millions of dollars in bonuses while the middle-and-poorer-class suckers they’ve gobsmacked find their pensions gone or their jobs lost?

Obviously all men are not created equal. And just as obviously there are all too many of us who have no participation whatsoever in the glorified notion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Of this we should be ashamed, not celebratory.

Perhaps instead of waving flags on the Fourth of July we should be waving crepe. Or instead of fireworks we should be setting off fire alarms.

I sincerely hope that Willie Parker finds the wherewithal to erect his memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. At least then we would have a strong reminder of a true vision, if not the actuality, of the Jeffersonian dictum.