Independence From What?

Everyone has Monday circled on his or her calendar to observe Independence Day – no, it isn’t the official barbecue cookout day as so many grocery stores and Kingsford charcoal would like for us to believe. For me, July 4 is one of six days off I’ll have from work this summer; hopefully after I awaken, I get to enjoy it with my wife and daughter as this one will be her first Independence Day. [Last year, I had to work while they stayed in the NICU. Thanks, swamp.] Beyond the fireworks show and the teenage rabble-rousers in our subdivision, I guess I should anticipate many grills searing hot dogs, hamburgers, kabobs, etc. and the massive stocking of ice coolers with Miller Lite and bottled water.

We celebrate our nation’s independence from Britain some 240 years ago. My ancestors have only benevolently felt freedom fairly recently – and even then, it’s one of the biggest dates of the year for our families to come together from near and far.

I say fairly recently for two reasons: Although slavery itself ended in 1865 only to be replaced by Jim Crow segregation that created a bit of a caste system for African-Americans for another century, freedom has always been an elusive concept for those of us who live on the outside and/or were not born into the lucky sperm or egg club, so to speak. Just as we seem to reach the Promised Land, the goal posts are pushed back further with additional conditions. If you can recall the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes from 1985-95, Calvin’s disgust with organized sports specifically baseball leads him to create Calvinball – where the rules change at his mercy and discretion. That was his break from playing baseball the right way, as the older standard bearers would say. This sounds like how Congress has operated since 2010.

Calvinball, courtesy of the great cartoonist Bill Watterson

The other reason why I feel freedom is a benevolent concept is through the nation’s symbolism. You know, the red, white, and blue everything with small-town parades, apple pie, and a wholesomeness that never really existed. Why should I go all-out on a day when some of our fellow citizens still wish I was 3/5 of an American and not entitled to the same rights, benefits, and privileges they have enjoyed for so long?

I’d rather stay at home and celebrate Juneteenth but June 19 is not a national holiday yet – and many southern employers around here won’t put respek on anything positive for black people unless they can somehow co-opt it for their own self-serving profit [See the MLK sales each January around his birthday]. I imagine this is why so many Arkansans love Donald Trump, that icon of mammon who could likely make former President Ronald Reagan look like Mother Teresa.

What should I feel independence from?
My current job? That would be nice, but I still have to pay bills somehow and on time. Plus, the side hustles (tech writing and BBQ) aren’t doing enough in their own merits to replace my primary income yet.

Taxation? Depending on the rates, I guess. When our revisionists among us refer to a time our nation was at its best, they often point to 1957 – just before the upheaval due to the Civil Rights Movement when their Leave It to Beaver world was hunky dory. What they fail to mention (or perhaps, too ignorant to know) is that tax rate on the top earners was a whopping 91% instead of the 35% they pay annually today. That funded interstate highways, the GI Bill, those low-interest home loans in most enclaves (black Americans still got the short end of the stick both with redlining and higher interest rates not to mention what would happen if they tried to integrate certain neighborhoods), the space race against Russia, and a host of other things.

Not being harassed? Come on, it’s 2016. Even I know Aiden is given the benefit of the doubt more than Adrian ever will in some quarters.

 Commuting? I work nights, so the only times I see rush hour are in the evenings when I drive into Haskell and the following mornings about a mile east of my exit. I’d rather manage my twenty-minute trip to work with a little Kanye West or Metallica than sit in that morning parking lot better known as Interstate 430. Besides, telecommuting is a dream long past me.

While the Founding Fathers were sweltering over the documents that would become the Constitution and Bill of Rights, my ancestors were in the Carolinas doing backbreaking labor enslaved to untoward sinners who actually thought they were being good Christians when they treated darker people like common property or machinery instead of the men and women they were, threatening them with severe punishment over slight imperfections to the cash crops or produced items, and even killed for learning how to read!

They say knowledge is power. In right-to-work states such as this one, said knowledge seems to be more of a deterrent due to supervisors and upper management wanting top-notch workers for peanuts. Those they can successfully snare are essentially enslaved to just enough wages to not revolt but not so much to brag on their companies effectively neutering their own ambitions beyond the paycheck.

Imagine what independence looks like to us.

Then ask me again about everything you just read.

#unpopulartruth #BlackFact pic.twitter.com/pGLSCPjJ2j

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) June 26, 2016