“I can guarantee you black folks will take that day off. We’ll barbecue because we’re off, but nobody Black I know is really excited about the Fourth of July,” she said.
Fired MSNBC host Joy Reid said that, because of slavery, black Americans are not truly excited for Independence Day.
“I can guarantee you black folks will take that day off. We’ll barbecue because we’re off, but nobody black I know is really excited about the Fourth of July,” she said in an episode of her YouTube show, "The Joy Reid Show."
“It is what Frederick Douglass said it is. It is the celebration of slaveholders who freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the Crown for their slave empire," she added.
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Reid went on to say that Juneteenth (June 19) represents the "real" Independence Day for black Americans, framing July 4 as a holiday that primarily celebrates white slaveholders' rebellion against British taxes while perpetuating their own system of human bondage.
This is hardly Reid's first controversial comment on race in America, particularly concerning black people. In a 2024 interview on Salon Talks with writer Dean Obeidallah, she said that black people “literally, physically, built this country” and therefore deserve much more than a two-term black president.
“To find out that literally Barack Obama’s two terms as president are your reparations, and Juneteenth, which you already celebrated anyway, is your reparations. Yet you built this country. You literally, physically, built this country, and yet the attitude toward you from a lot of your peers and your fellow citizens is: Just shut up and be grateful,” she said.
She further criticized America who, in her view, has not adequately acknowledged the legacy of slavery.
“To be a black person in 2024 in America is to be in a state of complete perplexed confusion about what is wrong with a country that hates your history, that to this day can’t admit even the basics of what was done to your ancestors, that can’t accept any responsibility for the lack that has carried through the entirety of your existence in this country, and that thinks 60 years of relative freedom is enough,” she said.
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