What to a Puerto Rican is this 4th of July?

In July 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech, titled "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" In that oration, Douglass, an escaped slave himself, spoke of how "your nation" celebrated its 76th anniversary, and he praised the cause of independence. But, he asked, what did that act have to do with him 76 years later?

Douglass continued:

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!

Indubitably, the United States has come a long way since those terrible days in which Douglass lived, especially after electing its first African American president last year. But the road to equality is still a long one, and I'm not just speaking in racial terms.

A friend today kindly invited me to a 4th of July picnic, and I declined, explaining that I don't mark the day because as a colonial subject I am not about to celebrate U.S. independence when this nation denies my own its liberty and equality.

I can vote for president as along as I live in the U.S., but not if I live in Puerto Rico, even though Puerto Ricans have fought in every U.S. war since WWI. And, yes, Puerto Ricans don't pay federal taxes but how many senators and representatives would Puerto Rico be entitled to in Congress, if we were fully vested with our citizen and representation rights? There are 4 million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico who have only one voice but no vote in Congress.

Now that the White House is no longer only a residence for whites, it may be that it's less acceptable among polite company to be openly racist against African Americans. But it sure feels like it's open season against Latin@s. In the main town near my small college on the hill, a young Latino kid was recently assaulted by four white kids with a noose (an African American kid was able to get away) and only one white teenager was charged and sentenced to just 10 days in jail.

While we now have a Puerto Rican woman judge nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, she has come under fire for everything from her hair, to her taste for our African-influenced native food, to the pronunciation of her last name, which is not anglicized for easy Anglo understanding, to her absolutely true statement that a wise Latina woman might know more about discrimination than a white man.

I have heard President Obama speak of the rights of Palestinians and have been glad. But I have yet to hear him mention Puerto Rico's colonial situation. We, either as Puerto Ricans or as Latin@s, continue to be largely invisible even when Douglass' specific question appears to have been answered by history (still, as Puerto Rican stand-up comic Bill Santiago suggests, we should get 43 more African American -- or at least non-white -- presidents in a row to be near even).

On this day of parades and picnics and fireworks, I am reminded of Douglass' words and his lion-like courage in asking his mostly white audience to think of the hypocrisy implied in their celebration of freedom when millions were denied the most basic liberty at that time.

Thus, on the day when this nation paints itself in its best colors to celebrate itself, I want instead to paraphrase Douglass and ask: "What to a Puerto Rican is this 4th of July?"