What, to us now, is the 4th of July?
Some food for thought from a few fave Black women authors
On this hallowed Fourth of July eve (okay, not a thing, but still), I feel I don’t have much to offer other than simply being a fellow human who feels sad and angry with you—if you have some feelings about the bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives today, which I imagine you might.
(And especially if you live in a place or move in social circles where you feel like you’re the only one grieving or raging about this…maybe it means something to be reminded that you are very much not alone.)
But I’ve been writing, for a forthcoming piece for the lovely Christians for Social Action, about Christian nationalism. Which means I’ve collected a gazillion brilliant quotes about the state of our country. Which is a few more quotes than I was able to actually work into the piece.
So, today I want to offer you some 4th of July food for thought, in the form of four quotes from Black women writers I respect and have learned so much from. People have been speaking to our current moment in some important ways, and I want to make sure I hear them. I hope we hear them, together.
All of these quotes are from books that have been published in the last few years—pre-2025. While much has changed since January, maybe it’s helpful to be reminded that the forces behind the highly visible, highly outrage-inducing things we’ve been seeing since then have been in motion for a long, long time.
I hope these words help us make some of those connections. I hope they help us reflect on who we have been as a country, who we are, and who we might still be.
From God Is a Black Woman, by
:
“Indeed, the god of America is a whitemalegod whose identity lies at the fatal intersection of white supremacy and toxic masculinity. The patron of white patriarchy, whitemalegod is designed to dwell among, identify with, and protect the power of white people and cisgender men. However, people of color, women, trans, and non-binary people who have been conditioned to believe in whitemalegod find ourselves wondering where God is as we face ongoing humiliation, dehumanization, oppression, and disillusionment. Whitemalegod is nowhere to be found because he was never designed to be with us, among us, or on our side.”
Whew. Where is God, in this time? Maybe part of the answer is: Where are we looking for God? Among whom are we looking? Who do we assume speaks for God, hears from God, is favored by God? And do we need to reexamine some of these assumptions?
For those of us with some connection to Christianity, whatever we might feel about our current administration may connect to the way we’re feeling about the god we were taught to believe in. And it is connected. I appreciate Cleveland naming this—that America has a “god,” and it’s one that is identified as Christian and is also so toxic in so many ways.
Resisting Christian nationalism means resisting this kind of god. And, for those of us who still want something to do with Christianity, or spiritual belief in some form, it means imagining, relating to, and joining with communities who aim to follow a very different kind of God instead.
“We live in a nation that does everything to induce our [that is, Black people’s] rage while simultaneously doing everything to deny that we have a right to feel it. American democracy is as much a project of suppressing Black rage as it is of legitimizing and elevating white rage. American democracy uses calls for civility, equality, liberty, and justice as smoke screens to obscure all the ways in which Black folks are treated uncivilly, unequally, illiberally, and unjustly as a matter of course. Had Darren Wilson been just a bit more ‘civil,’ Mike Brown might very well be alive.”
Cooper helps us think about the different functions—and different consequences—of rage, depending on whether the ones feeling it and wanting to express it are among the oppressed or the oppressors. And she helps us see the disingenuity of calls for “civility” coming from the same people doing so much violence.
People whose lives are uprooted by the violence of our current administration have every right to rage. And perhaps those of us who are white can learn to rage with and alongside our kin of every race—because when one community suffers, we all suffer.
From Reborn to Resist, by Christina Edmondson, a chapter in Truth’s Table: Black Women’s Musings on Life, Love, and Liberation:
“If the face and economic engine of American Christianity is actually right-wing Christian nationalism, we ought to hightail it away from there. For that religion is no more than white men hell-bent on not being figured out as insecure and in possession of illegitimate power. The faith of the biblical and first-century followers of Jesus was very different from the Christianities we might see around the world and across the street from us today.
Being able to distinguish between these different Christianities has been a part of the survival story of Africans since my ancestors were trafficked to these shores. Yet, somehow unacknowledged in Christian propaganda is a truer Christianity shaped in the hush harbors that turned slaves into abolitionists, silenced women into prophetesses, and those once in shackles into choreographers. It is in this Christianity that we are reborn to resist. Ours can be a Christianity that stands in the tradition of Tubman and Douglass, with clarity and conviction.”
Just as we can learn to distinguish between different kinds of gods (as Christena Cleveland does in God Is a Black Woman), we can also distinguish between the kinds of Christianities that have been born from very different assumptions, experiences, desires, and goals.
To the extent that I’m here for Christianity still, I am to be here for the religion of the enslaved. It’s a whole different thing from the religion of the enslavers. And these two strands are both still very real and alive and active today.
We still get to make a choice. And for white Christians like me, choosing the latter calls us into a long, not-easy-but-totally-worth-it journey.
“We are in troubled times. There is no way around it: we must wade in, face the realities and costs of the hierarchies of human belonging that we constructed in our nation’s earliest years. We must face the cost and figure out how to pay it. If we don’t wade into the water, we will find ourselves in this same place ten generations from now, with new interactions of control and confinement for people of African descent on the basis of Whitewashed Jesus read through the lens of empire.”
Oof. I don’t know about you, but right now I have a hard time imagining ten generations from now. The current path we’re on is so tragically unsustainable.
But maybe. Maybe we can still do some wading. Maybe we can still do some reckoning with our violent history and brutal present reality. Maybe we can do some truth-telling and truth-listening.
Maybe we can still build something altogether new and different, as everything many of us have relied on crumbles. Maybe we can gain the clarity to figure out what repair looks like and develop the courage to pursue it.
Maybe we can find a new kind of belonging, a new kind of kinship, in the process.
I hope one of these powerhouse thinkers gives you something to ponder, chew on, or talk about with friends this 4th of July weekend. And I hope maybe it sparks a small flame for resistance to continue.
In this with you.
ps. The title of this post is a reference to Frederick Douglass’ speech, What to the slave is the 4th of July? Apparently some of Douglass’ descendants made a recording of the speech, which is pretty cool and will hopefully be my 4th of July listening tomorrow.