July 4th–Why All the Fireworks?
Archived July '07

NEWSFLASH -- In terms of obvious patriotism, I am “one of those.”  I don’t place my right hand over my heart when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited.  I do however make sure that I always stand and look at the flag as I mouth the words and consider their meaning.  It’s never been a big issue and aside from a few annoyed looks at sporting events, I’ve been left alone.  For some reason, the fourth of July is different.  I get bombarded with phone calls and text messages all asking the essential question – What are you doing?  

My answer is always the same – nothing.  The modern day interpretation of this somehow implies that I’m only buying bar-b-que rather than cooking it or I’m mooching off of my neighbors’ fireworks experiment rather than going to a park.  But “nothing” really means nothing.  People use July 4th for a lot of things – time out of the office, family reunion, or kicking off a trip designed specifically for a three to four day weekend.  Like many other holidays – Presidents Day, Labor Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, it’s mostly treated as a day off.   While major events, particularly parades, are planned on other holidays, July 4th is special. And I suppose it is good reason. People feel anywhere between obligated and entitled to bar-b-que or at least eat someone else’s.  Fireworks are purchased and, like New Years, used far in advance of the actual date. At least this is the case in my South L.A. neighborhood.

Of course this is largely true in the African American community as well.    No one goes to work in protest of the high likelihood that had we been alive in 1776, we would have still been as owned as we were the day before.  For all the revolutionary talk among my friends and some of their older siblings who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, people pretty much gather around the grill and watch the sparks fly.  When I bring up the irony, I’m repeatedly told, “It ain’t that deep.” Mind you this is usually said after a certain amount of food has been consumed and the restful part of the afternoon is underway.  But perhaps they’re right.  

Live and let live – so to speak.  But the last few times it hasn’t been that way.  I can take people doing their own thing in the name of “celebrating,” but what I can’t take is people telling me that I’m “wasting” my day by not doing anything special.  While I don’t expect people to start buying food early and taking the risk of blowing off their fingers for Juneteenth, it would seem a bit more appropriate.  I mean what was I supposed to be celebrating – being owned by the descendents of the English rather than the French?  When I brought up the purposelessness of actually planning celebratory activities on the 4th to a couple of friends I got the usual “here she goes” eye roll.  Then an ex-boyfriend of mine chose to remind me why we broke up on the first place.  

“You know, it’s just tradition.  You do something on the 4th.  There were black people who fought in the war and died for the country’s independence.”

“So how are you celebrating Crispus Attucks and company?”

“Who?”

Fine.  I know I should just play along and it’s not like I’m a die hard revolutionary, but I like not acting like July 4, 1776 meant the same thing to my ancestors as it did to others.  What’s wrong with acknowledging that?  Why is everyone so afraid to admit that those fireworks mark a celebration that meant something to us only because it meant something to our owners?  There is significant and deep meaning, but it has weighty nuances.  But, as warned, I was digging too much or at least I was choosing the wrong holiday to do it.

People wanted to enjoy a day off.  Period.  They wanted to have a different type of family entertainment.  Most of us don’t like to be excluded from the national festivities, whatever they are.  In truth, with significant exceptions, more and more people of all races are completely disconnected from July 4th and what it meant to Americans of different races and ethnic backgrounds. They didn’t need to observe its true significance.  They could safely obscure and ignore it with mounds of food, retail discounts and dangerous, yet mindless entertainment.  In short, they could keep the holiday tradition going.  And who was I to judge?  I didn’t go to work on July 4th either.

But I did take some solace in answering another inquiry about my plans the way my maternal grandfather did when he was alive.

“What you doing on the 4th?”

“Waiting for the 5th.”