By Tikia K. Hamilton
When I was younger, I looked excitedly towards gathering at various relatives’ houses for the annual Fourth of July barbecue in Chicago. It didn’t matter much where the festivities took take place—I could always anticipate my Aunt Fran’s creamy potato salad, my Aunt Dale’s tangy barbecue-flavored spaghetti and my mother’s breaded fish. And, for dessert, I’d have the privilege of licking the bowl before others dove into my mother’s home-made, sweet chocolaty cake. However, what was most exciting about this holiday was my Uncle Zack’s transformation into a big kid; he collected all types of fireworks and was just as giddy as the smallest child when watching rockets soar and burst into rainbows that lit up the sky. Sure, Granddaddy’s political views – on everything from Ronald Reagan to the white Barbie doll he found one of the children doting on – put a momentary damper on our fun. But, overall those were good and often carefree times.
As I’ve gotten older, however, these family gatherings have become less frequent. Part of the reason is that I’m single and I also live some eight hundred miles away in New York City. As such, I see my family perhaps only two to three times a year. Even so, when I have had the chance to travel home during the Fourth of July holiday, there’s no family gathering to come home to. Several years ago, I sought desperately to pull together a cookout to rescue tradition from time and circumstance. After eagerly rising at dawn and spending the next six hours seasoning chicken, boiling two dozen eggs, and nearly torching myself at the grill, only about a third of my family showed up in spurts. That was in fact my last family barbecue. Now, when I go home, I usually spend my time down at the Chicago lakefront watching fireworks with a million other people who have traded tradition for convenience. The fireworks are nice, but irritation and fatigue quickly overwhelm me after about an hour of bumping into strangers and stepping in who knows what. I thus try to correctly time my departure from the streets so that I won’t have to wait incessantly for the El-train to take me back to the Southside, and so I’ll get enough rest to make my flight out the very next day.
I understand many of the more militant souls (such as I was during college) believe it is somewhat hypocritical to celebrate the Fourth of July. In many ways, it is a day that exalts the triumph of white democracy via the continued exploitation of enslaved African-Americans and the extermination of Native Americans. This much Frederick Douglass once pointed out in his rejection of what was perceivably a white-American holiday for nearly a century. Nonetheless, considering the fact our ancestors were for so long denied the opportunity to experience the type of liberty this celebration of independence purportedly harkened, it makes sense to me that countless (black) families have since then used this day as a way to create new memories. Unfortunately, in recent years, this day has become like most other holidays in America: For some it is simply a time to get the best “deals” on already overpriced products; for others, well, who wouldn’t want a day off from work? Admittedly, now, without the prospect of gathering with my family each year, I guess I have become a clone, as well.
In my estimation, one of the other reasons why my family no longer gathers for holidays such as today has to do with the nature of the society we live in. As young people have grown up and sought “independence”—one of the hallmarks of American society, of course—the emphasis that was once placed on family and communal values has diminished. In African-American communities in particular – communities linked to a history whereby kinship groups once exalted the family or clan, above individualism, this tradition has subsided tremendously.
As Dr. Conrad Worrill, Chairman of the National Black United Front, an organization devoted to securing opportunities in African-American communities, decries, “Far too many African people in America are getting away from the essence of family life…Family life is the basis for which a people maintain their cultural traditions, traditions that are important to the survival of a people. The way we raise our children in the context of extended family life for African people was always connected to the (sic) overall development of the larger community.” Worrill argues we are experiencing a type of “cultural surrender” when we dismiss our unique family traditions, while favoring those that coincide with that of the mainstream, namely racing to the malls to catch sales that “only come once in a blue moon.” Subsequently, though actor and philanthropist Bill Cosby has taken so much heat of late for his criticisms regarding the lack of proper childrearing in African-American communities, I believe he is correct in asserting that many of the problems that we face, such as drug use, gang violence and poor education, tie directly to the loss of traditional family values.
Indeed, “family” as it regards African-Americans in this country, has in many ways remained a tenuous concept.
By now, we must all agree that slavery was a cruel epic in American history, an epic that was tragic not merely because of the sheer brutality that accompanied exhausting labor, but also because of the uncertainty that surrounded family relationships which could be severed on a whim. Even so, African-Americans consciously struggled to maintain a semblance of family life by creating extensive family networks that included members of their immediate family when possible, and “adopted” members when deprived of interactions with their blood relations, as in the case of
Frederick Douglass.
As activist-historian
Angela Davis reflects, “The strong personal bonds between immediate family members which oftentimes persisted despite coerced separation bore witness to the remarkable capacity of black people for resisting the disorder so violently imposed on their lives.”
Thus, even though the forced enslavement of African-Americans contributed to the erosion of African familial networks and cultural traditions, blacks possessed an even greater desire to be together due to the possibility of eventual separation.
Some would even go through great extremes, sometimes risking life and limb to ensure that these family ties were not destroyed. When placed in this perspective, one has to wonder whether or not both Revolutionary and Emancipatory independence have come at an even greater cost to African-American families, and American families at large who have traded in the traditional family values for consumerism and individualism.
As a by-product of this “family-less” generation, it saddens me to think of how much tradition is being lost with each year that passes. In addition to creating new memories during those early years when my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins use to gather, it was also a time when elders gave children the gift of experiences we were too young to have witnessed. For example, I can recall the stories my grandfather use to tell about life in Mississippi, and why as a young man he was sent to live up north after a run-in with some white boys. I can also remember my mother's stories about her girlhood and how she had to eat hot dogs for Thanksgiving because my grandparents did not have enough money to buy a turkey. For, even with two college degrees in the house, racist times still demanded that they live in poverty. But they always—all of them—made the best of the most dire situations, and placed a premium on education, which explains why I am where I am today.
