Nu OriginsIn 2026, the United States is throwing itself a birthday party. Officials have declared a year of concerts, parades and patriotic reflection to mark 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. The story on offer is familiar: a quarter millennium of democracy and progress. From the vantage point of a Black American, though, the first question is blunt: celebrate what, exactly? This is a country that wrote “all men are created equal” while my ancestors were chained in ships, sold on auction blocks and worked to death.
We are often told to “look how far we’ve come”. From slavery to Jim Crow, from lynch mobs to mass incarceration, from redlining to “urban renewal” that bulldozes Black neighbourhoods. Some of that is true. But it is a strange soundtrack for a jubilee when Black people are still fighting for the basic right to live, vote, breathe and move through public space without being read as a threat.
In 1776, Black people were property, not citizens; for most of the years since, the law has organised and enforced our oppression. Our ancestors survived the Middle Passage, the plantation, the lash, the Klan, the chain gang and segregated schools. That endurance deserves reverence. But honouring their survival is not the same as applauding the system that tried to break them.
For us, this Semiquincentennial should be less a pageant than a summons to solidarity. We share a brutal history of stolen labour, land and lives, yet continue to excel in science, law, art, business, politics and spirituality. Our achievements do not vindicate America; they reveal Black brilliance and resilience in spite of it.
Meanwhile, the demand remains reparations: repair for centuries of theft and harm. Until there is truth, repair and justice, any call to “celebrate” 250 years invites the question: celebrate what?
