Two hundred and fifty years ago this month, a group of men signed a document that declared certain truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Well, not all men.
They weren’t talking about us. Africans were only three fifths of a person in the eyes of that same government. Freedom was only a word for some. That’s not ancient history I’m bringing up to stir the pot. That’s what this country was built on.
And this July, the reminder came fast. An 18-year-old named Nolan Xavier Wells went out on a boat with a group of friends in Mississippi on the Fourth of July. He never made it home. His body was found two days later. Officials say they don’t suspect foul play. But when a young Black man doesn’t come home from a day with white friends in a state like Mississippi, our community knows how to read the room, and we’re not wrong to ask questions.
Same story, different stage, at the World Cup this summer. Players from all over the African Diaspora have carried this tournament on their backs, Mbappé leading France deep into the knockouts, Virgil van Dijk captaining the Netherlands, a whole wave of talent from Cape Verde, Haiti, Morocco, Egypt. And still, a sitting Paraguayan senator went after Mbappé’s heritage in the ugliest terms she could find, right after he knocked her country out. Dutch players got buried in racist comments online after a tough loss. The pattern holds. We can dominate the game, drive revenue, entertain, and still get told we don’t belong in it.
And even while this country tries to frame blackness as always negative, we answer with who we actually are.
Black culture is the most copied culture on earth. Our music, our vernacular, our art and comedy, while being hated, our culture is adored and appropriated. That’s not new information to us, but it’s worth saying out loud, because it means something. It means you cannot erase a people whose culture the whole world is trying to wear.
And it means Black joy isn’t a distraction from the struggle. It’s part of the answer to it. Down in Portland this month, Frolic Fest is throwing a whole festival built around Black indie music and what they’re calling “naturecore,” Black folks out in nature, unbothered, celebrating. That’s not us looking away from what’s happening. That’s us refusing to let what’s happening be the only story.
We are, by and large, peaceful people. Building, creating, raising our kids, going to work, loving each other well. We hold the grief of Nolan Wells and the fury of watching our brothers get racially abused on the world’s biggest stage, and we hold our joy, our music, our frolic, all of it, at the same time. That’s not a contradiction. That’s just how it’s always been for us.
We have never been who they said we were and we’re still not. Happy Fourth, but don’t forget while you celebrate this country’s freedom, it wasn’t meant for everyone.