The yearly commemoration has always marked a contradiction. But despair is not a strategy: this is a moment to create change
The Fourth of July celebration of freedom rings hollow this year. The contradictions built into a national commemoration of our triumph over autocracy feel newly personal and perilous – especially to those who have, until now, felt relatively secure in the federal government’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
But the contradiction is far from new. Black, brown and Indigenous communities have always seen the gap between the ideals of American democracy and the lived reality of exclusion. Frederick Douglass’s 1852 address What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? demanded that Americans confront the hypocrisy of celebrating liberty while millions were enslaved. Today, those contradictions persist in enduring racial disparities and policies that perpetuate segregation, second-class citizenship and selective protection of rights.
Deborah N Archer is the president of the ACLU, the Margaret B Hoppin professor of law at NYU Law School, and the author of Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality. L Song Richardson is the former dean and currently chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California Irvine School of Law. She previously served as president of Colorado College. Susan Sturm is the George M Jaffin professor of law and social responsibility and the founding director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School and author of What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions.