Posted on 07/05/2019 5:13:49 PM PDT by lightman
Former San Francisco 49ers Player Colin Kaepernick, apparently still riding the endorphin-high triggered by his beating up on a pair of sneakers, has now gone after the whole of American independence.
In a now-infamous tweet, Kaepernick quoted Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech, pairing it with a video showing scenes of slavery, civil-rights era abuses, and apparent police brutality against African Americans. A voice-over features the narration of James Earl Jones reading a portion of the Douglass speech. The video makes the poisonous accusation that American independence does not include black Americans. Kaerpernick posted it on the Fourth of July.
Whether or not Jones approves of the use of his reading, I don’t know—he recorded it for another context. What is apparently clear is that Kaepernick neither appreciates nor exemplifies the incredible character of Frederick Douglass.
Douglass was an American patriot who very much loved this country. Like all good lovers, Douglass hated those evils that harmed the object of his love—including not simply those evils that pose external harm to the beloved, but those evils with which the beloved is complicit. Regarding America, Douglass rightly hated the continued reality of slavery. Kaepernick recognizes this. His tweet captures this in his use of Douglass’ speech:
What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
The video’s narration captures even more:
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me.
These are difficult words to read on Independence Day. They cut. They shame. And they should. In Kaepernick’s hands, however, the quotations are so divorced of their context as to be misleading. Wonderfully, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz took to Twitter to help correct the record.
Douglass’ speech was delivered on July 5th, 1852. Importantly, as Cruz rightly points out, this is to say that Douglass delivered his words prior to the American Civil War. This matters.
In the antebellum period, whites throughout the country marked the Fourth in much the same way many Americans do now: family feasts, community parades, and, well, plenty of booze. Even without football, celebrations managed to impress a European visitor witnessing the festivities to proclaim the Fourth “almost the only holy-day kept in America.” But it’s true, as Kaepernik’s usage of the Douglass quote suggests, that black Americans demonstrated considerably less enthusiasm for the holiday. As CSU Fresno historians Blain Roberts and Ethan Kytle note, those blacks who did observe the holiday preferred—as Douglass himself preferred—to do so on July 5th. This served both “to accentuate the difference between the high promises of the Fourth and the realities of life for African Americans.” Not trivially, it also helped blacks in the South to avoid confrontations with drunken white revelers.
But by July 4th, 1865, the situation in the South had reversed itself. Having failed in a bloody four-year effort to defend slavery by breaking free from the United States, Confederate sympathizers were in no mood to celebrate American independence. But while southern whites “shut themselves within doors,” southern blacks embraced the Fourth with new zeal. As Roberts and Kytle write, “from Washington, D.C., to Mobile, Alabama, they gathered together to watch fireworks and listen to orators recite the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Thirteenth Amendment.” For the next ten years, in Charleston, celebration of the Fourth was a predominately black phenomenon:
The city’s annual celebrations commenced with a parade down Meeting Street, featuring brightly dressed citizens, politicians, brass bands, and uniformed members of the South Carolina National Guard, which, in the post-war era, was composed almost exclusively of formerly-enslaved black men. The parade ended at White Point Garden, where thousands of people would gather for a great picnic and a shady rest. The focal point of these events was a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, followed by political speeches delivered by the black Republican leaders of the day. After all the official business was over, the citizens would eat and drink, nap, frolic, and dance.
Some more revisionist views of this history want to suggest that what the black celebrants were really going on about was black emancipation, not American independence, per se. The apparent ubiquity of reading the great founding documents—such as the Declaration of Independence—disproves such speculation.
It is, of course, also true that Southern black celebrations of the Fourth did not proceed with such exuberance for long. In under a decade, after Northern occupation forces departed, bigoted whites would begin to reclaim power over their black neighbors. Brutalities against blacks during July 4th celebrations would help usher in a dark, violent, and cruel era.
Even so, the moral example of Frederick Douglass should not be lost. Kaepernick would have done well to read Douglass’ entire July 4th Speech. He might have been surprised to see that Douglass uses the phrase “fellow-citizen” no less than twelve times, this to an audience made up mostly of whites. Douglass spends the first half of his talk reminding these fellow-citizens of their shared history—emancipation from the tyranny of England, the great American men who rose up to create a great America, their willingness to forgo a life of ease and, instead, to pursuit justice, life, liberty, and human flourishing. Douglass does not deny any of this.
Indeed, he uses it to demonstrate his sorrow for having to make the denunciations that lie ahead. Moreover, he takes this great national history and grounds his own personal history within it. Noting the privilege of addressing the assembly he says:
The distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude.
It is only then that Douglass embarks upon his damning assault against slavery. His rhetoric is far more incandescent than anything that could ever be conveyed via Twitter. He is astonishingly brilliant in his condemnation. And yet, through it all, his tactic is to remind America that when it comes to slavery America has betrayed herself. Douglass deploys American virtue to attack American sin. His venom is what love looks like on the assault. Because of everything he has said about the greatness of America, his end-game is clear: he means to rescue America. He means to return to her the full measure of her goodness.
Unlike Kaepernick, moreover, Douglass does not lose faith in America: “Allow me,” he writes, “to say, in conclusion, I do not despair of this country.”
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country … There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery … the doom of slavery is certain … I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.
Douglass, happily, would live to see an America that made good on his faith in her righteous spirit. In fact, by calling his fellow black Americans to enlist with the Union in the Civil War, it was a task in which he encouraged his brothers to take part. As President Trump said in his own July 4th speech:
Devotion to our founding ideals led American patriots to abolish the evil of slavery, secure Civil rights and expand the blessings of liberty to all Americans …This is the noble purpose that inspired Abraham Lincoln to rededicate our nation to a new birth of freedom, and to resolve that we will always have a government of, by, and for the people.
Kaepernick—and those who cheer him on—do not stand in the tradition of Frederick Douglass. In their eagerness to scold, their apparent refusal to accurately describe the reality around them serves only to divide, not too unite. They are a part of the problem, not the solution.
Christians must follow Douglass’ example. We should not shy away from denouncing evil where we find it. But we must not shy away from acclaiming goodness either. When both are found in the same person, or movement, or nation, or any other entity—who should lay aside the easy task of polemical hyperbole and carefully trod the harder path of speaking truth in love.
Between this jackass and Alyssa Milano, Idiocracy is now real...
On the flipside he honors the spirit of Marx, Castro and Che.
Who elected Colin for any of his many kaepers?
That’s probably because the scumbag and all his fellow travelers follow WEB Du Bois. Black separatism. Black superiority. Communism.
To idiots such as Colin Kaepernick and MSNBC hosts and viewers, do facts matter, does our history matter, does the final outcome of struggles matter?
For example, talking about the horrors of slavery, does it matter to these idiots that we ended slavery???
In talking about Jim Crow and segregation and Bull Conner and his police dogs, does it matter to them one whit, that this doesn’t happen anymore, and that blacks won the civil rights movement????
In talking about Selma Alabama and the voting rights marches of the era, and John Lewis being beaten up, which is discussed a lot, does it matter to anyone that the Voting Rights Act was passed and blacks won that battle over the Jim Crow voting restrictions???
Does the fact that we have overcome the things that some still complain about, matter to anyone???
So do the Black Panthers, supposedly.
If they gave up their grievance, then they would have to take responsibility for their actions and outcomes. It’s much easier to blame Whitey for their failures as a culture.
Colin Kaepernick isn’t fit to shine Frederick Douglass’ shoes. (if the latter were alive)
bump
I have never read that entire speech before, and like most Americans, I have only seen bits of it taken out of context, often used as that contemptible stain Kaepernick and his ilk did, to make political points on the ignorant.
The overarching irony is that many blacks are being kept on a modern form of a slave plantation, often willingly, by the same type of people Douglass takes the time to pillory in scathing fashion in his oration.
The same type of people who profess the same type of sentiments (however implausible and in different and more modern ways) that they use on the Left to justify their actions that only result in the black community being kept in chattel to The State instead of in slavery to their Fellow Man.
Today, those same types of people are often aided and abetted by their fellow blacks. People today like Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Colin Kaepernick, who would sell their fellow blacks out to gain currency both real (in the form of Nike contracts or Rainbow Coalition kickbacks) or power in the form of virtue-signaled celebrity or election to public office.
Aided and abetted in the same way the merchants in the "internal slave trade" were aided and abetted by their fellow black brethren in 1852 who helped hunt down and imprison escaped slaves, or ironically, aided and abetted by those distant relatives of Barack Obama who helped hunt down, capture, and enslave free African blacks in the service of slave merchants at an earlier date when there was an accepted international slave trade. And done so for a piece of silver.
Today, it is done for both silver AND power, both of which for many amount to the same thing. And it is contributed to by many in the black (and non-black) communities who embrace a poisonous version of black culture that glorifies disdain for personal responsibility, knowledge, education, misogyny, drug use, and violence.
That oration by Stephen Douglass was a powerful speech, and in context, true with scathing denunciation of the hypocrisy of our Republic in its present state in the year 1852. It is sad to see his accurate references to the hypocrisy of the Fugitive Slave Act, and chilling to see his prescient and accurate vision of the horrible and bloody war that was then less than 10 years away.
But it is also true that his criticism is as trenchant today and should be (but is not) directed towards the like of the Left who believe that blacks are not qualified to rise on their own abilities and merits, and can only do so with the power of the state applied, a poisonous and corrosive belief system that potentially destroys not only seeks to tear down those (such as conservatives) who oppose that mindset, but those who embrace it.
It is unsettling to see Douglass's unformed vision of the terrible yet unavoidable conflict looming less than ten years in their future in 1852, and wonder if those of us who see a coming storm are unknowingly destined to see the same bloody thing in that same time frame.
"Kaepernick—and those who cheer him on—do not stand in the tradition of Frederick Douglass. In their eagerness to scold, their apparent refusal to accurately describe the reality around them serves only to divide, not too unite. They are a part of the problem, not the solution."
Yep.
The real example of a black patriot and someone worthy of respect and celebration in the tradition of the Americn Dream should be Booker T. Washington, not the execrable W.E.B. Dubois.
But that is who they celebrate, and they instead treat the man as an “Uncle Tom” who advocated hard work, learning a trade, and integrating into society as the best way to put the aftereffects of slavery behind all of us.
And here we are.
They want to enjoy the results of the founders; the economic wealth, the expansive culture, and the breadth of self-indulgence: but they find the discipline, sacrifice, and respect for those who have differing opinions to be undesirable.
They are like children who want a generous allowance, but don't want to do any chores.
Colin K intelligence plus Alyssa Milano’s could be harnessed to convert to energy to light up a dim , flickering light bulb over the license plate of a rusty Yugo——for about ten seconds tops.
MENSA rejected them with LOL under the reply.
Perhaps but at their core, I believe they’re simply hateful people.
Great article. Thanks!
Blacks did not "win" the civil rights movement. AMERICAN CITIZENS of ALL races promulgated the said civil rights movement. Did blacks participate prominently...assuredly yes, but without their alliance with others, would also assuredly have lost.
Great article
Thanks for posting!!!
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