Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Frederick Douglass asked what the Fourth of July meant to the slave. In 2025, the question still haunts Black Americans, especially as MAGA celebrates with fireworks, beer, and denial. iPINIONS marks this Independence Day by echoing the founding contradictions Douglass indicted. Read more on my Substack:https://ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/what-to-the-black-is-the-fourth-of Read more.
I’m referring, of course, to the famous 1852 speech by Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Because, frankly, you could substitute Black for Slave throughout and it would still resonate. Douglass decried the many ways America’s treatment of Black folks made a mockery of its Declaration of Independence and founding… Read more.
I have been making this claim for decades. It’s based primarily on the fact that Frederick Douglass personified both the contradictions and promises that define America’s founding documents. And he did so like nobody else has or ever could. Unfortunately, even black historians have been so indoctrinated with white historiography, they invariably try to qualify my… Read more.
I could not have been prouder when the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in September 2016 on the hallowed Mall in Washington, DC. That it opened under the auspices of the first black president of the United States made the occasion seem providential. In fact, I was so proud, I became… Read more.
