“If you’re black and you celebrate today you don’t know your history. Our Independence Day is dec 6 1865. Ya look silly,” said Dozmen Lee, a UROC Senator for Student Government, in a Facebook post on July 4. 

His status set off a frenzy of both supportive and opposing comments coming from various races.

“The 4th of July is not Americas independence day. It’s white Americas Independence Day,” said Lee. “In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.” In fact, the whole reason they separated themselves from Britain was for liberty and freedom. Yet during this time. Thomas Jefferson had an abundance of slaves (along with most of the other founding fathers). One of which whom he raped when she was 14 and impregnated nine times.”

The slave Lee is referring to is Sally Hemings, one of his 175 slaves who Jefferson had a 37 year relationship with and is known to have fathered at least one and as many as six of her children. 

Lee’s main argument is that because black people didn’t have equal rights on July 4, 1776, they shouldn’t celebrate the day as “Independence Day.” 

Going off of this logic, where does that leave women? In 1776, free women obviously had more rights than slaves, but they were almost entirely dependent on their husbands and were primarily used for child bearing. 

“To be direct I think anyone who isn’t a rich white landowner kind of got the shitty end of the stick,” said Lee. “Women couldn’t vote, blacks were enslaved, the natives were pushed out of their land. This holiday isn’t for everyone.”

I agree that not everyone was seen as equals when the founding fathers wrote that all men were created equal, but I don’t agree that people shouldn’t celebrate the Fourth of July because of this. 

In 2013, The Washington Post published an article about slavery in the modern world. With 0.02 percent of the population in slavery, the U.S. isn’t entirely in the clear, but only a few countries in the world are. Slavery wasn’t and still isn’t a problem that was/is only restricted to America. 

I believe that every American should celebrate the Fourth of July if not for the freedom they received in 1776, then for the freedom that we all have now. We can all pledge allegiance to the American flag for representing these freedoms and we can celebrate the Fourth as the first step towards the lives we’re able to live today. 

America has a long ways to go until all men and women are treated like equals – there are still many race issues in the U.S. I realize that I can’t truly understand the history of slavery or tell any race what they should or shouldn’t celebrate because I’m white, but when I look back at how far America has come since 1776 for the rights of everyone – white or black, man or woman, straight or not, disabled or abled – I think that that’s something that we should all celebrate.