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The Black American vision of democracy
If the United States survives to celebrate its quincentennial in 2276, I hope my descendants will forgive yours.
Not because America was imperfect. Every nation is. But because generation after generation chose not to see what was directly before them: the full humanity of Black people.
As the nation celebrates 250 years of independence, Americans are once again asking what, exactly, we are commemorating. The answer depends, in part, on where one stands. It also depends on what one has been forced to see.
More than a century ago, W. E. B. Du Bois gave us perhaps the most penetrating description of Black life in America. In ”The Souls of Black Folk,” he described the burden of “double consciousness:” the peculiar condition of always looking at oneself through one’s own eyes and through the eyes of a society that insists you are less than fully human. But embedded within that famous passage is another concept that deserves renewed attention during America’s semiquincentennial: second sight.
Second sight is not supernatural. For many Black folks, it is historical. It is the vision that develops when a people must constantly evaluate the nation not only according to what it says about itself, but according to what it does to them. Black people in America have become experts in American contradiction.
Decades of abuse, no accountability
Maryland's Child Victims Act let survivors sue over decades old abuse, no matter the timeline. Now Baltimore police face a wave of lawsuits alleging officers raped and abused children in their custody, some cases dating back to the 1980s. But a judge just dismissed most claims against the city and state, citing sovereign immunity and a legal catch-22 over who actually employed BPD officers.
NJ bans surveillance grocery pricing
New Jersey lawmakers just banned "surveillance pricing," where grocery stores use your shopping data and location to jack up prices at checkout. Democrats say it's about ending sneaky algorithms that punish loyal shoppers. Republicans? They're defending free turkeys, Klondike coupons, and McDonald's fry deals like their lives depend on it.
Citizenship amid a national crackdown
52 immigrants from 24 countries just became U.S. citizens at Theodore Roosevelt's Long Island estate, timed to America's 250th birthday. The ceremony lands amid a national immigration crackdown, ICE quotas, and fights over birthright citizenship. making this celebration feel like a quiet act of resistance. Stories from new citizens originally from Kenya, the Philippines, El Salvador, and Algeria show what the American dream still means to people willing to fight for it.
A VIEW FROM THE GROUND
Perspectives and opinions from voices closest to the issues shaping our communities
Credit: AsAm News / Robert Lingley via Wikipedia Creative Commons
Op-ed: Trump’s ‘red menace’ speech
Trump's July Fourth weekend speech at Mt. Rushmore did more than mark 250 years of independence. He warned of a "communist menace" tied to "newcomers," language critics say is a thinly veiled shot at immigrants and progressive voices alike. The echoes of Roy Cohn and the McCarthy era are hard to miss.
The timing matters. This comes right after a major birthright citizenship ruling and amid rising ICE arrest quotas sweeping up even legal immigrants. Add in Speaker Mike Johnson floating an end to birthright citizenship, and you've got a midterm season shaping up around exclusion rather than expansion.
There's also a sharp irony running through it all. The same president warning about communism has cozied up to Putin and called Xi Jinping "a smart and great leader." For Asian Americans especially, the red scare rhetoric isn't abstract history. It's a pattern with real consequences, from surveillance to deportation fears.
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