My grandparents and great grandparents have passed down stories of how this country has been a source of anguish and pain for them. Since I was a kid, my mother and father have shared stories with me that their parents have shared with them about the tragedies of being Black in America.
My grandparents and great grandparents were incredibly proud to live in this country. More proud than you could ever imagine. since I was a kid, my father-and-mother have shared stories with me not their parents have share with them about how Black Americans moved forward with dignity and triumph while changing America for the better.
Both of these realities exist.
Both of these realities exist in me.
At the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York in 1852, in the same speech that Frederick Douglass took the country to task for slavery being legal, he praised the constitution as a “glorious liberty document,” and spoke of his admiration and love for the country; evidenced by the fact that he advised multiple presidents and became the first Black US ambassador to Haiti. I would encourage anyone who is aware of the speech, whether you have read it already or not, to read it very carefully in full.
Anyone who highlights the points they like over the points they don’t like are manipulating and mangling his speech, and his life.
He fervently meant everything that he said in the speech. Everything.
Like my relatives before me, I have rather harsh critiques for my country, but there’s no other place I would rather live.
Both of these truths exist.
Both of these truths exist in me.
And I refuse to play the binary game every year.
One ever feels his twoness,––an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
-W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903