"At least I know I'm free" -- thoughts on this Independence Day

I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free.

First performed in 1984, Lee Greenwood's patriotic song has become part of the American songbook over nearly forty years of performance. It's a staple of political rallies and July Fourth events. While more recently it's more common at conservative political rallies, it doesn't contain any political statements that can be attributed to any party or cause. It's a song in a long tradition that includes George M. Cohan and Irving Berlin.

July 4 is the day that the United States mark the publication in 1776 of the Declaration of Independence by 13 colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America from Great Britain. Notwithstanding the fact that millions of enslaved people-in bondage because they were Black- were not independent of anyone. The recently declared holiday of Juneteenth marks the day, two and one half years after the end of the Civil War, when Black Americans in the far reaches of Texas were finally notified that they were no longer enslaved.

What does freedom mean?

We talk about freedom often in this country. Freedom of speech; freedom of expression; freedom of religion; freedom to travel; even the freedom to arm oneself with a weapon. It's worth noting that none of these freedoms are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration itself is a list of grievances about the rule of the British Crown, some of which include:

• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 
• For protecting (armed troops), by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

Don Newcombe was the first
Black pitcher to win 20 games in a season
in the major leagues, after 50 years of 
Black players being excluded.

Some of these sound familiar, given the political environment of the past eight years, marked by the corruption of Supreme Court justices leading to decisions rescinding basic human rights for women and LGBTQ+ people and making higher education inaccessible to all but the wealthiest Americans; the lack of accountability for police forces in unsanctioned killings, particularly of young Black men; the backlogs and huge costs of the legal system that make the system of justice inaccessible to all but the wealthiest of the wealthy; and the continued refusal to accept election results. 

The Declaration of Independence, though, is a list of wrongs. The freedoms that it suggests weren't enshrined in national law until the Bill of Rights-was passed thirteen years later. And the US did not become a fully multiracial, multigendered democracy until 1965 -- within the lifetimes of my parents -- when the Voting Rights Act was passed, 45 years after women received the right to vote.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about how the freedoms that are alluded to in the Declaration and encoded in the Bill of Rights are just as often-if not more so-freedoms from oppression rather than freedoms to do things. "Freedom of speech" enshrined in the First Amendment isn't the right to say whatever we want, but it's the inability of government to restrict speech, religion, or assembly, or to refuse to accept grievances from the citizenry. Gun rights expressed in the Second Amendment isn't the freedom "to have all the guns you want" as John Mulaney rather elegantly explains, but the inability of the national government to restrict the raising of state militias. And so on.

How free are we, really?

Joanne Weaver hit .429 for the 
1954 season and is one of baseball's
women on the field.

Which begs a question: how truly free are we in this country? Nearly 60 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, as numerous states have restricted access to voting, all Americans are not free to vote. Fifty years after Roe vs. Wade, and more than a century after the 19th Amendment granting women the ballot, the Supreme Court rolled back Roe and took away

women's basic rights to healthcare, agency, and the right of their own bodily autonomy not to be infringed by the government. More than a decade after the Obergefell decision, LGBTQ+ people are demonized by state and national elected officials, and their rights to personhood-to gender-affirming care and safety from parents, teachers, and clinicians are infringed by governments. Two years after a violent insurrection to overthrow the elected government of the United States-the worst antidemocratic incursion into Washington, DC since 1814-its leaders have yet to be charged with any crimes related to it. So, to draw back on Lee Greenwood -- at least I know I'm free, but a lot of people don't feel that freedom. At least not freedom from oppression.

On this July 4th, I'm touched by Robert Reich's statement about who we are:

America's moral mission has been toward greater inclusion -- providing equal rights to women, Black people, immigrants, Native Americans, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, and agnostic.

True patriots don't fuel racist, religious, or ethnic divisions. Patriots aren't homophobic or sexist.

Nor are patriots blind to social injustices -- whether ongoing or embedded in American history. They don't ban books or prevent teaching about the sins of the nation's past...they are devoted... to the ideals of America -- the rule of law, equal justice, voting rights and civil rights, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from fear, and democracy.

So where to go from here?

In data visualization, concepts that get a lot of attention are inclusivity (designing and writing for everyone) and accessibility (designing without technical barriers that can prevent people from fully appreciating the impact of the work). They are related but unique concepts. (Think of a curb cutout that is accessible because it allows people in wheelchairs to access the sidewalk, but that is also inclusive because it makes the sidewalk more usable for animals, people with sprained ankles, and people with rolling luggage or carts.) 

This can mean things like using unbiased language and imagery that doesn't assume baked-in knowledge that might not be understood by certain groups. It can mean explaining concepts that might go over people's heads -- I avoid sports analogies in my non-sports presentations -- and using words that don't assume an audience's gender.

It means giving space to underrepresented voices, amplifying their roles in the the discussion instead of speaking myself. There are enough white, heterosexual, cisgender men in their fifties to go around and while I certainly have a contribution to make, we need to have more Black, LGBTQ+, female, and intersectional voices at the front of the room.

It means creating an expectation that all of the spaces where we live, work, and play -- including virtual spaces -- represent the same values that our multiracial democracy aspires to represent. America didn't become a multiracial democracy until 1965 -- so it's important to note that all American institutions-our colleges and universities; our companies and organizations; our sports leagues (save for, notably, the WNBA and Major League Soccer); which predate the Voting Rights Act and thus have elements of the systemic racism that has plagued this country for as long as it has existed. This is most definitely not to say that everyone involved with these institutions are systemically racist -- but as Ibram X. Kendi notes, this is where we are called upon to not just be "not racist" but to be antiracist, calling out institutions for instances of systemic racism that can be corrected.

So yes, at least I know I'm free -- but until we're all free, freedom is a work in progress.