By: Olivia Ho
Certain Americans are losing hope and interest in celebrating the Fourth of July because of some political changes and movements across the country.
Many people have different reasons why they don’t want to celebrate the Fourth of July.
High tech manager in Manhattan, Marissa Vivori, realized that she never enjoyed the Fourth of July from past experiences. One summer, she was on a Long Island Railroad train on the Fourth of July and described the day horrible.
“I didn’t get a seat and I was standing in the aisle,” she said, “and the toilet overflowed, and we all had to hold our bags.” Then she says, “I remember even as a kid feeling bad for the animals during the fireworks.”
Fireworks are not good for both our environment and animals — some animals like cats and dogs can hear way better than humans, so when they hear the fireworks, they hear it way louder than a human would.
Other than the fireworks and the environmental consequences of them, some people are choosing to not celebrate the holiday because of their political opinions.
18-year-old Malaya Tapp stopped celebrating the Fourth of July in 2020 when she started to see racial injustices. She also said that to her, releasing fireworks is like using guns, which is like increasing gun violence.
Because the 4th is founded on our country finally gaining “freedom” from Britain, many find an issue with the holiday because they recognize that not every American became free on July 4th, 1776. There was still slavery and racism that Black people and Native Americans had to face.
Although slavery is now abolished in the US, racism still affects our society. This has caused people to question the celebration of freedom on the fourth because if there were truly freedom, there wouldn’t be racism.
Content creator Conner Miskowiec recently asked locals in Phoenix if they were planning on celebrating July Fourth. He said that the responses were unexpected and surprising. The responses ranged from, “America is the greatest country in the world, and we have to celebrate the American dream” to “This country has a lot to work on, and America isn’t so free, and I don’t feel like celebrating.”
After his research, he concluded, “I think a lot of people think America isn’t for everyone anymore, and so it’s not an inclusive holiday.”
Based on the conflicting opinions on July Fourth, it would be better for no conflict to occur as it is a holiday, and some people don’t celebrate specific holidays. One reason for that can be because the person has a different religion. Another could be because they are stressed or something bad happened to them which somehow relates to the holiday. Overall, there are many more reasons why.
“It’s very much a controversial holiday now,” says Ms. Tapp. “We all have to decide for ourselves if we want to celebrate.”