The Case Against the Fourth of July

By Ryan Wentz

In 1992, indigenous leaders succeeded in pressuring Berkeley, California to drop the Columbus Day holiday and replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day. Since then, hundreds of U.S. cities and a handful of U.S. states have followed suit. This shift is merely symbolic, but it does reflect a change in how the general public understands American history. Today, in 2020, a national uprising against anti-Black state violence has pushed the discourse into uncharted territory: all around the country, protesters are tearing down statues of notorious racists, from Christopher Columbus to Thomas Jefferson. This reckoning is long overdue; American exceptionalism, militarism, and patriotism must be challenged. Displays and celebrations of oppressive structures like settler colonialism and white supremacy must be put to rest. This year and each of the next, don’t celebrate the Fourth of July.

As it was in 1776, the U.S. today is a genocidal, anti-indigenous, and anti-Black settler colony;  the country’s anti-indigenous, anti-Black past has transformed into an anti-indigenous, anti-Black present. The U.S. government’s response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and national uprising against racist police violence illuminates how little it values indigenous and Black lives. For indigenous communities, coronavirus has been especially devastating. Navajo Nation has recorded more cases per-capita than any U.S. state, and had to sue the federal government to receive the funding that it was promised. Meanwhile, police forces across the country continue to terrorize Black communities. That this global pandemic has not been able to slow down state terror against Black people speaks volumes. In fact, authorities have cracked down harder; police murdered Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, among others, during this global pandemic. Additionally, it is stunning to compare how authorities have responded to protests for justice for Black people with protests demanding the U.S. reopen its economy. 

Considering that the Fourth of July is a celebration of the U.S. and its so-called “independence,” perhaps it’s important to relitigate why the so-called “Founding Fathers” fought the British. In his 2014 book, “The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America,” Dr. Gerald Horne asserts that the revolution was in fact a counterrevolution to preserve slavery. At the time, the British empire was inching closer to abolishing slavery, which scared American capitalists who relied on slave labor to accumulate massive fortunes. Thus, the following question must be asked: what is the Fourth of July actually celebrating, if not the creation of an inherently violent settler colony built on stolen land by stolen labor? 

These are the types of difficult questions that we must ask ourselves as we seriously interrogate U.S. history. It may be unpleasant, or even earth-shattering, to reconsider the narrative that we have been told about the U.S. But that is precisely what needs to happen; the public must grapple with the lies that it has been told to justify and uphold white supremacy, settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. 

Every year on July 4th, it is nearly impossible to escape the flag-waving and fireworks. We can, however, reject everything that the holiday stands for and make the choice not to celebrate it. The U.S. government is currently terrorizing entire indigenous and Black communities both inside and outside of its colonial borders; we cannot go on ignoring these crimes.

In Bolivia, for example, last year’s U.S.-backed military coup forced Evo Morales, the first indigenous leader in a country with an indigenous majority, into exile. The coup regime and its supporters are explicitly racist towards Bolivia’s indigenous communities; in 2013, Jeanine Áñez, the unelected leader who has ruled the country since November, tweeted that “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites.” Additionally, after the coup, its supporters declared: “Bolivia is for Christ.” Many burned Wiphala flags, a symbol of Bolivia’s indigenous majority. In the following weeks, the military massacred at least 18 indigenous protesters in Sacaba and Senkata. Protests against the unelected government continue to this day.

In addition, U.S. support for the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine illuminates how central anti-indigenous racism is to U.S. policy. In 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky, an influential Zionist leader, wrote: “Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population.” Today, as Israel moves closer to the annexation of the occupied West Bank, Zionist leaders share the same understanding. The U.S., meanwhile, enables Israel to colonize Palestine “against the wishes of the native population” by providing its military with $3.8 billion per year, approximately $10 million per day, to continue ethnically cleansing Palestine and entrenching the illegal occupation. 

Just as it has propped up anti-indigenous movements around the world, the U.S. has supported explicitly anti-Black regimes, like in Apartheid South Africa. In November 1973, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA). The U.S., however, neither signed nor ratified the convention. Over one decade later, in 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, declared that “apartheid is an evil as immoral and unchristian in my view as Nazism, and in my view the Reagan administration's support in collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally unchristian, without remainder.” The U.S., along with its Western allies, was one of the last states to officially cut ties with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In the twenty-first century, the U.S.’s assault on Black lives on the African continent has continued. The U.S. has been meddling in Somalia for over three decades, and continues to drone bomb the country with impunity. Meanwhile, the U.S., with the support of N.A.T.O. and Western-backed rebels, overthrew Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. By 2011, Libya was atop the African continent in Human Development Index; nearly 85% of Libyans were literate, while the average life expectancy hovered around 75. Yet because Gaddafi refused to completely submit to Western imperialists, he was deemed a threat that needed to be taken out. Today, Libya is a collapsed state where Black people are being sold in open-air slave markets.

The U.S.’s horrific treatment of indigenous and Black communities abroad is a reflection of the crimes it has committed against both communities at home. It is essential that we understand that anti-indigenous and anti-Black racism is foundational to the existence of the U.S.; without them, there would be no U.S. empire. Thus, celebrating the U.S. is celebrating anti-indigenous and anti-Black racism. It is celebrating settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, slavery, genocide, and imperialism. Ultimately, what Christopher Columbus represents is no different from what the U.S. represents.

Ryan Wentz (any pronouns) is a Los Angeles-based field organizer for Beyond the Bomb, a grassroots organization committed to preventing nuclear war. Ryan has experience in the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements, and has in the past worked at the American Friends Service Committee and CODEPINK.