Independence Day? Isn’t it Time to Move On?

I have to confess to a longstanding fantasy, the fulfillment of which I resist in part because of its impracticality, but also owing to a general distaste for inviting violence upon my person.

It typically comes to mind at this time of year, as communities across the country gear up for their respective Fourth of July celebrations, replete with fireworks and hot dogs, to say nothing of the flags and red, white and blue banners that will soon assault the visual landscape from sea to shining sea.

The fantasy is especially tempting this year, as the president prepares to hijack the day’s events in Washington D.C. by bringing in tanks to mimic parades in authoritarian hellholes like North Korea or Russia, all under the guise of proper patriotism.

In the fantasy, it’s incredibly hot, even as the daytime sun recedes, soon to give way to the darkening skies that will serve as the canvas for a colorful explosion of incendiary art: the end product of two unstoppable forces — American self-love and Chinese manufacturing — brought together in an audacious display of grandiosity.

As Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” blares from a sound system loaded onto the back of a truck, and the yearly Independence Day parade begins, I bide my time. Then, just as the first procession of Boy Scouts passes, I turn to the man standing next to me, the one with the big “God Bless the USA” button on his hat, and ask:

“Why can’t you get over it? I mean, why do you insist on living in the past? That whole ‘breaking away from the British’ thing was more than 200 years ago. Isn’t it time to move on?”

Then, before my stunned and increasingly belligerent target can manage to slug me for my apostasy on this, the holiest of all national holidays, I break into a flat-out sprint, hurtling myself down the block. The patriot gives chase, but having consumed one too many pieces of apple pie, he becomes winded, ultimately giving up, shaking his fists and calling me names before getting back to the orgy of Americanism in which he had been engaged before my arrival.

Please know, I am not a sadistic type. I don’t seek to cause distress, be it physical or emotional to anyone, even to the kind of person who believes, against all visual evidence to the contrary, that the colors Betsy Ross sewed into that flag so long ago make for an acceptable wardrobe palette.

It’s just that now and then, I remember how quick so many of us are to use a similar line, and I feel as though we should perhaps be required to consider how that kind of dismissiveness feels from the other side of it.

This is, after all, the common response that so many white folks offer whenever someone of color dares mention the less than celebratory aspects of our national history. It is the default reply for many whenever the subject of enslavement is raised, as it has been lately in the national discussion about reparations and how to address the legacy of white supremacy.

Indeed, whenever someone dares to mention such a matter as this, the rebuttal to which we so often retreat is as automatic as it is enraging: “Oh, that was a long time ago, get over it,” or “Stop living in the past,” or, “At some point, we just have to move on.”

In other words, the past is the past, and we shouldn’t dwell on it. Unless of course, we should and insist on doing so, as with the above-referenced Independence Day spectacle, or as many used to do with their cries of “Remember the Alamo,” or “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Both of those refrains, after all, took as their jumping off point the rather obvious notion that the past does matter and should be remembered. But it’s a logic that vanishes like early morning fog on a hot day when applied to the moments we’d rather forget, not because they are any less historical, but merely because they are considerably less convenient.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but when millions of conservatives affiliated a few years ago with a movement known as the Tea Party, whose rallies featured Revolutionary War costumes, powdered wigs, and muskets, they are in no position to lecture anyone about the importance of getting past the past.

So too, when millions more have attached themselves to Donald Trump — whose slogan “Make America Great Again” implies that the nation’s past was some glorious time to which we should seek return — it becomes difficult to take seriously the idea that people of color are the ones who prefer dwelling in the past.

And don’t even get me started on the wavers of confederate flags, who are among the most animated in their desire to downplay the horrors of slavery (for obvious reasons), but who are literal poster children for the inability of some, and especially certain white people, to get over eras long since gone.

The truth is, we love living in the past when it venerates this nation or makes us feel good.

If the past allows us to reside in an idealized place, from which we can look down upon the rest of humanity as besotted inferiors, then the past is the perfect companion: an old friend or lover, or at least a well-worn and reassuring shoe. If, on the other hand, some insist that the past is also one of brutality and that this brutality has skewed the distribution of wealth and opportunity even to this day, then the past becomes a trifle. Reminded of our less salutary moments the past is rendered a mere pimple on the ass of now, an unwelcome reminder that although the emperor may wear clothes, the clothes he wears betray a shape he had hoped to conceal.

The past, in those cases, is to be forgotten.

For vast numbers of us, it appears that we would prefer to seal the past away in some memory vault, only peering inside when it suits us and the cause of uncritical nationalism to which so many find ourselves wedded. But to treat the past this way is to engage in a fundamentally dishonest enterprise, and one that, in the long run, is dangerous. Unless we grapple with the past in its fullness — and come to appreciate the way that past has impacted our present moment — we will find it increasingly difficult to move into the future a productive, confident, and even remotely democratic republic.

None of this is to say that we must agree about how to interpret the past, or about how the past affects the present. Just as historians debate these issues amongst themselves so too should everyday folks feel free to do the same. But just as historians understand the importance of reflecting honestly upon the past in an attempt to make sense of the present, so too must we take up that enterprise.

And let us understand that history is not the same as memory.

Memory is selective; it fails us; it is a choice we make. Memory is the stuff that your great-great-grandparents opted to tell their children. History is the part they left out. And not accidentally.

If we are to survive as a nation, we’ll have to be as committed to the truth as we have been to the lie, willing to face the down as readily as the up. And to admit that both are worthy of reflection, and where necessary, repair.

So let the discussions and debates continue: about reparations, about the best way to teach history to children, about the proper way to interpret the Constitution and so many other subjects. But let us require that those discussions and debates be rooted in truth, however uncomfortable.

Just because lying has been so long the practice in America, and just because it has been elevated to an art form by the current administration doesn’t mean we should enshrine it as a permanent national pastime.

Surely we deserve better.

As to whether we can actually do better, however? That remains an open question.

Portions of this essay appear in Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority (City Lights, 2012) by Tim Wise.