Happy birthday, America
Felicia grew up in Washington D.C. just north of the capital. She has since moved further out thanks to housing prices that make living here unaffordable for many. But every year she comes down to the mall on the fourth of July to check out the Folklife Festival, now in its 50th year.
Felicia doesn’t have children, but she says loves them. She’s trying to let her hair grow grey, as it wants to. Her grandmother had a beautiful, long, grey mane, she says, but she’s not sure she’ll be so lucky.
We meet on a sizzling day at a picnic table where she’s enjoying baked beans and bbq chicken — a whole leg that’s so good she just can’t stop eating. I’m with two friends from Indonesia — one a native Indonesian who just received her U.S. green card. The other a Taiwanese American from Texas. Their one-year-old son is a global citizen. He’s gobbling up the fish-sauce braised cabbage on his Vietnamese chicken salad, much to Felicia’s delight.
Felicia has seen D.C. gentrify over the years but seems somewhat resigned to changes she knows she can do nothing about.
“When you’ve grown up in a predominantly African-American community,” Felicia says with a pause … “it’s just different.”
“But, as my father used to say, we weren’t here first,” she adds.
The way D.C. has developed is a topic I have raised frequently with friends throughout my visit. Many people seem to recognise that gentrification pushes up houses prices and in doing so ousts long-time residents. They also point out that it improves the safety and aesthetics of neighborhoods, bringing in local restaurants, shops and cafes. They produce mixed communities (for a time at least), though people of different incomes and ethnicities don’t much mingle.
My conversation with Felicia stays with me as I head north to a bbq at a neighbourhood in Petworth, an area I would have had little reason to visit just a few years ago. Now, people like me are buying up row houses and settling in.
At the bbq people talked about property ownership and how neighborhoods in D.C. were pricing even them out. The people there are hardcore triathletes and an eclectic mix of people from across the D.C. spectrum. I meet a man with a 7-Eleven hat who’s gotten into nutritious eating following a health scare and another whose jobs involves interpreting health care policies.
It was a quintessential July 4th afternoon following a morning marked by an Independence Day parade down Constitution Ave. There were high school bands from across the country — one of which had a baton corps that threw mock wooden riffles; a Sikhs of America float followed by Bollywood dancers and a giant inflatable Uncle Sam. Abortion protestors showed up momentarily to unfurl banners of partial fetus and young African-American girls in sequins turned up the heat on the street with their hip-shaking moves.
Much later, on the streets, I watched boys aim Roman Candles at one another starting long before the official fireworks finished. A friend volunteered to walk me home to protect me from getting caught in the crossfire. With my camera out I looked like a spectator, he said.
Happy Birthday America, I thought. In many places divisions have deepened. Hatred has taken on a new dimension. Yet despite all that has happened since November, patriotism was on display. The celebrations of the land we share and call home have changed little since I was a child. Newly minted Americans are still grateful and honored to be here, pulling for the promise they believe America holds. What that promise is today, and what it means to different people is something I look forward to learning more about.
