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Former MSNBC host Joy Reid is making headlines again after declaring that neither she nor the black people she knows are particularly interested in celebrating the Fourth of July because America’s founders owned slaves.
What caught my attention wasn’t the history lesson. It was the phrase “the black people I know.”
Whenever Joy Reid starts talking about the black people she knows, I find myself wondering exactly how many people we’re talking about. At this point, Abby Phillip may account for a statistically significant percentage of the sample. The rest appear to come from the same media-activist ecosystem that spends most of its time talking about America rather than living in it.
Literally millions of black people all across America will celebrate and are very excited for the 4th of July.
Joy Reid just lives in a weird activist & media bubble. https://t.co/hmxP1M7nCX
— Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) June 22, 2026
According to Reid, black Americans may barbecue on the Fourth of July, but they are not really celebrating what the holiday represents. Why? Because she views Independence Day as little more than a celebration of slaveholders freeing themselves from British rule so they could continue running a slave empire. In Reid’s telling, Juneteenth is the real Independence Day and the Fourth is largely an exercise in historical self-congratulation.
But since Joy wants to play historian, let’s talk about some actual history.
To support her argument, Reid turned to Frederick Douglass’s famous 1852 speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? She referenced the portion where Douglass condemned a nation that celebrated liberty while millions remained enslaved.
Fair enough.
Douglass absolutely delivered a blistering indictment of slavery and the hypocrisy surrounding it.
The problem is that Reid seems to stop reading where it becomes inconvenient.
Douglass did not spend the rest of his life arguing that America was irredeemable. He did not conclude that the Declaration of Independence was meaningless or that the Constitution should be tossed into the nearest harbor.
In fact, he repeatedly appealed to America’s founding principles as the very reason slavery was wrong in the first place.
Reid treated Douglass’s speech as though it were a rejection of America itself. It wasn’t. Douglass condemned slavery with righteous fury, but he also praised the principles that eventually made slavery indefensible. That’s why he called the Constitution a “glorious liberty document.”
Joy Reid took one of the most powerful speeches in American history and somehow managed to reduce it to “America bad.” If that isn’t grifting for clicks, attention, and relevance, I’m not sure what is.
At this point, I am beginning to suspect that criticizing America is not merely something Joy Reid does but something she genuinely enjoys. Every holiday eventually becomes an opportunity for a lecture. Or every patriotic celebration becomes evidence of some deeper national failing. And of course, every American accomplishment arrives with a warning label attached.
Does Joy Reid actually believe any of what she spews? Maybe. She probably does. But ever since MSNBC showed her the door, she has gone from being a cable news star to chasing relevance one hot take at a time. These days, getting people talking about Joy Reid again seems to be half the point.
The odd thing about Reid’s argument is that it requires pretending the next 250 years never happened.
Yes, some of the founders owned slaves. Americans know that. We also know that slavery ended, and it did not end because history magically corrected itself.
The country fought a Civil War, passed constitutional amendments, and spent generations wrestling with the gap between its ideals and its reality. None of that seems particularly important in Reid’s version of the American story.
Instead, everything gets reduced to the original sin. It is as though no progress was ever made, no lessons were learned, and no improvements ever occurred.
By that standard, America is permanently disqualified from celebration no matter what it accomplishes.
Every year around this time, somebody in the media feels obligated to explain why Americans should be less enthusiastic about their country. The flag is problematic. The anthem is problematic. The Fourth of July is problematic.
The funny thing is that ordinary Americans never seem to get the memo. They keep showing up to parades, baseball games, cookouts, and fireworks displays because they understand something Joy Reid does not. Loving your country does not require pretending it is perfect.
If Reid wants to spend Independence Day sulking through a cookout while explaining why nobody should be enjoying the holiday, she is certainly free to do so.
Most Americans see something larger than that. They see a country worth celebrating despite its flaws.
That may not impress Joy Reid.
Then again, Joy Reid’s friend group isn’t America.
Feature Image: AI-generated illustration.
SFC D says: The United States of America is a work in progress. It has been since July 4, 1776. The words “A more perfect union” are included in the Declaration of Independence. Not “a perfect union”. Our founding fathers did the best they could with what they had to work with. In establishing the constutution, they created a mechanism for laws to change and adapt with a growing nation. Joy Reid and her little circle of friends have forgotten or choose to ignore this. It does not suit their narrative. If there is no racial outrage, they will creat it.
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