July 4th

Fourth of July rolls around and I am left wondering what exactly it is that we are celebrating. Try and try as I might I can never find reason to be patriotic for this country I have to call home. There comes a certain connatation or image in being a proud American, and it is never one I wish to be as much as I would like to say that I am proud to be an American, it at times leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Growing up Hispanic I have always been surrounded by Hispanics who were proud to be Mexican/Salvadoran and yet also grateful to have had to oppurtunity to build their lives here in America, but when Fourth of July rolled around it was nothing but a reason to set off fireworks to show that somehow we were apart of this country, somehow we belonged.

Every American holiday was nothing but an empty reason to celebrate. Celebrated in confusion and more of a means to conform than a means to celebrate. America is constantly referred to as a melting pot, yet seldom do we take actual pride in it.

America is a sugar coated story.

To be patriotic here is to be ignorantly prideful over a country not even half of us could give the accurate history of. We take pride in things that maybe we shouldn’t, and instead of bringing acknowledgement from our past we bring fury instead. Too prideful to admit that maybe we weren’t always so great and at what cost did this land become what it is today?

Fourth of july is a reason to celebrate our freedom as a nation, maybe even a time to celebrate how far we have come. Yet so many of us still lie buried under inequality; even more so now, equality and representation is handed out to us in months, take our turns in the spotlight only to have to go back into the shadows once our month comes to an end. All while the rest of the year we are torn down and prohibited, rights taken away, health care taken away, our own lives taken away.

Everything that we say we are built on seems to be crumbling right beneath our feet, constantly regressing instead of progressing. It hasn’t felt as if we are one nation indivisible, with justice for all at any point in Americas life time.

We wash away Americas past into nothing but American flags and eagles, yet do we even know what those symbols truly mean? Do we know what we want to represent when it comes to those two main symbols? Walk into a store and one of the top things you’ll see adoring a picture of a flag and/or eagle are the words “beer, freedom, bbqs” maybe even throw in some guns and that is the main sentiment of those symbols.

I feel the need to ask if that is truly how America wants to portray itself and how it couldn’t want to seem more…educated.

There is nothing to America it seems, aside from guns and beer. Seems as if we think our freedom is tied to the ability to have guns and beer. When does our need for equality, true freedom, justice, and love start to outweigh the need for guns and beer?

When do we stop pretending as if we have already built ourselves out from the ashes and truly begin to build up this country into what it could be? America seems to be prideful for things that we have yet to accomplish, we reek with arrogance, and push away humility for more pride.