'Rough Crossings' on Independence Day: Never Forget That More Black Folks Fought for the British than the Colonials

As you feast on entrails, drink high fructose corn syrup and other poisons, I hope that you enjoy the July 4th holiday, what is a celebration of a country built on the genocide of First Nations peoples, the enslavement of black people, and racist settler colonialism.

The United States is not a country of immigrants–immigrants assimilate into a new culture–rather it is a country of white settlers who wiped out the people already living here and then imposed their values on them while creating a founding mythology of “empty land”, “Manifest Destiny”, “American Exceptionalism”. As you watch the fireworks, most of them having been made in China, do reflect on those facts.

On July 4th, I, like many others in the so-called commentariat, share American icon Frederick Douglass’ searing and brilliant speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Alternatively, I have also shared my adoration and affection for one of the baddest black men to ever live (and who deserves his own movie), a real life version of Tarantino’s Django, the one and only former black slave turned scourge of white slavers in New York and New Jersey, he who was Colonel Tigh, leader of the Black Brigade.

On this July 4th, we should be reminded that more black people fought for the British than the Colonials. Why? Because American Independence was a war to protect the institution of chattel slavery by creating a herrenvolk whites only democracy that defined freedom in opposition to the enslavement of African-American human property.

This fact is often ignored or obscured in American popular memory because 1) black leadership need(ed) to reinforce the loyalty and “real Americanness” of African-Americans as part of their freedom project and 2) White America’s public memory alternates between viewing black folks as perennial outsiders and disloyal while pointing to the end of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement as proof of the inherent goodness of white folks and the American democratic project.

Simon Shama’s book Rough Crossings is an excellent exploration of how both black human property and free peoples responded to and navigated The Revolutionary War and The Founding. After you have eaten and drank to the point of exhaustion, emptied your bowels and bladder, and perhaps rutted with a ready and willing person (or persons if you are so lucky) Shama’s discussion of black freedom and slavery in colonial-era America will give you some clarity of thought about the real meaning of Independence Day.