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My family has never been enslaved. That's why I find it most offensive for certain segments of the minority population pushing for slave reparations.

Our country will heal the racial divide when racial profiteering has ended.

I celebrate the Fourth Of July because I'm an American and damn proud not be a member of any other country. That's it. It doesn't matter what color skin you have or don't have. If you are proud of America, you will honor her no matter what. That's the essence of America.

Actually, unless your family sprang out of thin air a couple hundred years ago, if you will trace the geneology far enough back, their ancestors were almost certainly both slave and slaveholder. Which has nothing to do with this most eloquent of speeches. Slavery was the one fatal flaw the founders could not overcome in Philadelphia, and they had to let it pass or let the Union dissolve on the spot. The Civil War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, started our journey back to justifying this nation as being worthy of that oversight. We just may make it yet. Thank you Arc, it has been thirty years since I read Doglass, and it is a timely piece for thoughtful consideration on Independence Day.