Defining Unindependence Day

By: McKensie Mack, Founder x Chief Purpose Officer, MMG EARTH

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass, a prominent speaker and abolitionist delivered a speech at an Independence Day celebration in Rochester, New York. That speech was entitled, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

Today, on the federally recognized holiday that is July 4th, we ask a similar question: What to Black People is Independence Day?

Two years ago, as we were building out our holiday and PTO schedule at MMG EARTH, I asked myself as a leader how I wanted to manage federal holidays. Every July 4th and Thanksgiving Day, my feed was filled with memes about Black people at the BBQ.

These Black folks were expressing both a fulfilling dissent (pun intended) and a collective awareness that a number of federal holidays are really about celebrating a legacy of whiteness in a country in that Black people have never truly been independent.

It was then that our commemoration of Unindependence Day was born. Unindependence Day is a holiday commemorating our declaration of unindependence in the United States of America and our demand for systemic pro-Black liberation. The prefix un means to do the opposite of, to reverse, contrary to.

Much like the Supreme Court last week reversed protections for Black and Brown students seeking an education.

Very similar to the Supreme Court's behavior in contrary to the United States' promise of liberty and justice for all when they made it lawful for companies to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ people on the basis of their sexual identity.

The opposite of supporting the pursuit of opportunity and stability when they blocked the right to student loan forgiveness, an act if done in entirety would eliminate debt for?43?million disproportionately impacted Black and brown households and immediately increase the wealth of Black households by?40%.

Since the 17th century, when our ancestors were forced into this country, we have been treated as property. And although, because of the labor and sacrifice of our people, we have made progress toward liberation, the figurative and literal shackles have remained.

Although we, as Black people, make up a little over a tenth of the population, 40% of people in prison or in jail are Black, 48% of people serving life, life without parole, or “virtual life” sentences are Black, 30% of people on probation or parole are Black.

And we know how this could be solved:

• ending the militarized occupation of police in our communities,
• offering a real chance at a quality education,
• forgiving debt (especially predatory loans targeted towards Black people) that keep us in a sharecropping relationship with white dominant institutions and companies that make millions off the interest.
• Dismantling healthcare racism which quite literally refuses to give adequate care to Black people in this country (especially Black cis women, Black trans women, Black people in the South, Black folks living in poverty, Black queer people, Black people with disabilities, and more)

But one of the downsides about knowing how to confront systemic racism in our country is that the white people and non-Black People of Color who want to keep us disenfranchised know these answers too.

And what do you do when something you own starts to escape from your grasp, you dart out your hands as quickly as possible in an effort to squeeze it that much tighter so that you cannot lose it.

As Black people in this country, as survivors of centuries of anti-Black racism and white nationalism, we are human first. We are human beings deserving of liberation, justice, education, quality of life, accountability for the harm that has been done to us over centuries, and reparations.

Until we get that, our team here at MMG EARTH will continue to commemorate the realities of what we continue to navigate, fight against, and seek to overcome, the reality of unindependence in the United States of America.