You know, I always wanted to know what it would be like to simultaneously experience the Spanish flu, Great Depression, and 1968 mass protests while Andrew Johnson was president. Tweet by Miranda Yaver @mirandayaver who identifies as Political scientist (US law & policy), Health Policy & Management Postdoc @UCLA, freelance writer, @Columbia Ph.D., Cal bear, @springsteen fiend, @warriors fan Los Angeles, CA mirandayaver.com

What a strange 4th of July. Quarantined at home, watching the wildlife in the backyard, on a warm summer day, our life approaches perfection. But, outside our home, in the world, the pandemic has infected close to twelve million people, killing over one hundred thirty thousand of them in the United States alone. Safe at home, we have visitors two by socially distanced two, we drink good wine, eat exquisite food, and tell ourselves how lucky we are. Outside, mass protests for social justice continue with periodic bursts of violence, usually by so-called “law enforcement”. At home, everything has slowed down making life more conscience, more delicious. 1,391 miles away, in South Dakota, the President of the United States rants about saving Confederate statues of long-dead, slave-owning, traitors while attacking the patriotism of living people but, in my safe, quiet, nest I’ve only heard the vile rant from tinny speakers next to a fifteen-inch screen.

I say “Happy 4th of July” but my heart has become heavy thinking about the Fourth, weighed down by the reality of what life entails for many in our country. The reality of what we are, what we have been since our founding. I was taught – maybe not so much taught, as absorbed by osmosis – that the 4th of July is a celebration of our Freedom and our Liberty and our just general Goodness and Exceptionalism that those great Americans fought for. I knew that some of the men – and they were all Property-Owning White Men – who signed the Declaration of Independence forty four years ago owned slaves but I was able to overlook that horror, that injustice, in my admiration of what they left me, but, it turns out upon reflection, that they only left it to their fellow white men like me. Now, as my eyes are being forced open by the glare of reality – forced open by, among other catalysts, the writings of a long line of Black People – I am starting to look at that Declaration differently.

I think, How could these Declaration of Independence signers be so hypocritical? but the harder question is, How could I have been so hypocritical? so oblivious? I have been so righteous in my ignorance, so superiorly righteous about my country. At my home in a middle-class community, I am safe, as cops, protecting the same White Patriarchy that founded this country, shoot young black men with almost universal impunity. It is the strangest 4th of July, seeing the dichotomy between my life and the life of many of my fellow citizens. It makes me sad and hopeful.