Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, July 10, 2018

It was custom made for conservative clickbait: A Facebook post quoting the Declaration of Independence was banned by the social network on July 4 as “hate speech.” Facebook apologized and restored the post, blaming its algorithm for the mistake. This small incident reflects a deeper truth: If current demographic changes continue, the Declaration of Independence someday will be widely regarded as hate speech. After all, it announced the founding of a new Western nation, a white republic that has little in common with the post-American Third-World entity now being created by non-white immigration.

Patriotic, well-meaning whites may resist the idea that the Declaration could ever be hate speech. Non-whites already see it that way. Every July 4, more and more of them announce that the Declaration has nothing to do with them. This year, Frederick Douglass’s “The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro,” with its passionate declaration, “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?” trended on Twitter for most of the day. [My “Meaning of July 4th for the White Man” is here.] For many non-whites, the day is one for expressing scorn, not patriotism. This, in a country that still practices extensive racial preferences in their favor.

The Declaration of Independence explicitly excludes/demonizes the indigenous ppls of this country: “…the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”#4thofJuly pic.twitter.com/TPEDQi7gbW — Simon Moya-Smith (@SimonMoyaSmith) July 4, 2018

As some deservedly enjoy a day off work, it’s not a bad thing to be aware of context. The Declaration of Independence, the bedrock of today’s celebration, calls Native Americans “merciless Indian savages.” This history is worthy of acknowledgment. https://t.co/qyZAZ0JRfL — Ava DuVernay (@ava) July 4, 2018

The Declaration of Independence states that I am among the “merciless Indian savages.” Well in this context and on this day, I’m proud to be. We are resilient. We are still here. And we are stronger. ✊🏽🖤 #StillHere #ProudToBe #SicanguLakota — J. M. D. (@_NativeInLA) July 4, 2018

Senator Kamala Harris of California tried to use the Declaration to support immigration, claiming that eight of the signers were “immigrants.”

A reminder this Fourth of July: it was eight immigrants who signed the Declaration of Independence. Happy Independence Day. — Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) July 4, 2018

Forty-eight of the signers were born in the colonies, and eight were born in Great Britain. In 1776, they were all subjects of the crown, and none could have been an “immigrant” because the United States did not exist. Senator Harris’s supporters were unlikely to care either way; they were too busy complaining that those who led the world’s most famous anti-colonial uprising were themselves colonizers — or worse.

Let’s talk, folks. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were genocidal, land-stealing invaders. They were not immigrants. https://t.co/2UiP4Q19tL — X (@XLNB) July 4, 2018

Aunty Kamala nooo! I see what you did there. You probably had good intentions with this but please stop! It should have read like this – It was 8 colonizing, genocidal, raping, racist white men who signed the Declaration of Independence. These are their descendents!👇👇 pic.twitter.com/Be6S13sTuG — Ebonee Stevenson (@EboneeStevenson) July 4, 2018

This nation was not founded by immigrants. Europeans squatting on already-occupied land with the goal of producing raw goods for the wealth of England is COLONIZATION, not immigration. Please stop rewriting history to fit a convenient modern political narrative — Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) July 4, 2018

These emotional reactions are actually a significant concession to white advocates. The Declaration of Independence really was by whites and for whites, as was the nation it created.

Many American Indians don’t feel included by the Declaration of Independence — and they shouldn’t. The Declaration’s reference to “merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions,” recognizes that they were utterly alien to the signers. American colonists were vividly aware of the many attempts by Indians to drive out white settlers, including the Massacre of 1622 in Virginia or King Philip’s War in New England. Though Indian tribes fought on both sides in the Revolution, they fought to defend their own interests.

Many blacks also feel excluded from the Declaration of Independence. In 2016, State Rep. Barbara Norton of Louisiana opposed a bill that would require students to recite the famous preamble to the Declaration every day because, she explained, “For the Declaration of Independence, only Caucasians was [sic] free.” A similar bill was fiercely opposed by black New Jersey State Senator Wayne Bryant in 2000. “You have the nerve to ask my grandchildren to recite these words?” he asked. “How dare you? You are now on notice that this is offensive to my community.”

Senator Bryant’s political career ended with a bribery conviction in 2008, but he was right about Declaration: it excludes blacks. They were initially included in a passage that criticized King George III for permitting the slave trade:

He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical Warfare, the opprobrium of infidel Powers, is the Warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. [He is] . . . suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. . . . [H]e is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them . . . .

This later-deleted passage is often cited by American conservatives eager to defend Jefferson’s memory against charges of racism by showing that he opposed slavery. Jefferson did despise slavery, and whether King George actively promoted it or not, it was legal throughout the empire until 1835. In any case, this passage was not an argument for egalitarianism or integration. Jefferson was explaining that slavery has created a terrible problem for white Americans, since the British were inciting slaves to massacre whites. Jefferson thought this provocation was just as monstrous as the original enslavement of the blacks.

In Jefferson’s view, slavery imposed on the colonies a foreign population of blacks, who would be a perpetual danger. In times of war, as during the Revolution, they would be a potential ally for enemies eager to sponsor rebellion. Jefferson assumed that Americans were white; he distinguished between “one people” against whom former crimes had been committed (blacks) and “another” (white Americans) whom blacks are being told to massacre. To Jefferson, opposition to slavery, sympathy for blacks, and desire for separation were not incompatible sentiments. As he wrote in 1821:

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be, pari passu [i.e., on an equal basis] filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.

Only the first sentence of this passage is on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial. Jefferson goes on to liken “emancipation and deportation” to the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. He was calling for a white nation.

Jefferson’s condemnation of slavery also contains what is probably a reference to the Barbary Pirates who captured and enslaved whites. According to Professor Robert Davis, more whites were enslaved by the Barbary Pirates between 1530 and 1780 than were black Africans transported to the New World. Jefferson, undoubtedly familiar with the Islamic pirates, is almost certainly alluding to them with the phrase, “This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers.” His sarcastic reference to “the Christian King of Great Britain” implies King George III, Defender of the Faith, is acting like a Muslim slaver. The late Christopher Hitchens also thought Jefferson was referring to the Barbary Pirates in this passage. Of course, one hesitates to champion this analysis lest leftists now call the Declaration of Independence Islamophobic, as well as racist.

It was perhaps inevitable that Jefferson’s flourish that “all men are created equal” later be interpreted as a statement of racial equality. Like a cancer, his ideas have metastasized in ways he couldn’t have imagined. Yet taken on its own terms, the Declaration of Independence is a profoundly Identitarian document.

It professes ideals for all mankind, yet recognizes necessary distinctions. Despite its universalism, the Declaration is a defense of independence and separation. This vision of different peoples having distinct societies was later justified with the phrase “separate and equal.” Even ties of blood must sometimes be severed. Jefferson explained that political separation had become necessary because his “British brethren” had “been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity.”

Many of those who occupy America today have no “consanguinity” with either the founding population nor our larger white family. From their expressions of resentment and even hatred it is clear they do not regard whites as “brethren,” even if they hold American citizenship. It is therefore not surprising many despise the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers, and the creation of the country itself. America in increasingly being filled with people who have no connection to the historic American nation.

Jefferson recognized that conflicts between different peoples and races are tragic but inevitable. American Indians, blacks, Hispanics and others should not be faulted for not identifying with a country that initially offered citizenship only to “free white persons.” America was never really for them. As anti-white sentiment becomes mainstream and non-whites assert their own racial heritage, what will keep America together if it loses a white majority? The Declaration really will be considered “hate speech.”

Yet that may be an opportunity. Perhaps it is time for whites to cut away the rhetorical flourishes and rediscover the core message of the Declaration of Independence. We are a people. We can create great things if we are free to be ourselves, and only we can be ourselves. Most importantly, when unnatural political arrangements and unwise policies force us into perpetual conflict perhaps it is time “for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” Like our ancestors, it may be time to become “separate and equal” in a society that is ours alone.