Is July 4 a racist holiday?

And now July 4 is racist | Liberty Classroom - Tom Woods:

July 4, 2020 - "Even Independence Day is racist now.... There's a hashtag trending on Twitter today: #FvckTheFourth [there's also #FvcktheForth and #Fvckthe4th - gd]. Classy, as we've come to expect.

"One person asked: why are black people celebrating the day some slaveholders won their independence? Well, I suppose instead we could celebrate the non-Western societies that were spreading the ideas of natural rights and individual liberty that this very person is appealing to today. Perhaps he could name a few to kick it off? We'll wait.

"You'd think people could at least pause to acknowledge that the very principles they claim to appeal to – equality under the law, individual rights, etc. – emerged from the Western civilization they profess to despise....

"Naturally we're encountering even more frequently than usual the old chestnut about the Declaration of Independence having been hypocritical in its claims about equality because those claims applied only to whites. Well, our old friend Kevin Gutzman, celebrated Madison and Jefferson biographer and faculty member at my Liberty Classroom, has a nice reply to that. Enjoy:...

"Of the five men who drafted the Declaration of Independence:

1. Roger Sherman of Connecticut drafted the Connecticut law that abolished slavery in Connecticut;
2. Benjamin Franklin was the president of an abolition society that submitted a petition for the abolition of slavery to the first US Congress;
3. John Adams, as the chief draftsman of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, wrote the section that was read by a Massachusetts court as having abolished slavery in Massachusetts;
4. Thomas Jefferson co-sponsored a 1769 bill to abolish slavery in Virginia, wrote the first draft of the law that banned slavery from the Midwest, called for and signed the law that abolished the international slave trade, wrote the most influential antislavery book in American history, drafted a bill (which failed by one vote in Congress) that would have banned slavery from most of today's Deep South, and wrote the part of the Declaration of Independence that says "all men are created equal"; and
5. Robert Livingston … well, his record I don't know as well, but I do know that several of his political allies in New York and some of his relatives were involved in antislavery, which led to abolition of New York slavery under a 1799 law signed by his friend Governor John Jay.

So why do we say slaves weren't included in 'all men are created equal'?

It seems to me that people are making a lot of uninformed assertions. (In case you want to know more about Jefferson and blacks, I not-so-humbly refer you to the "Colonization" chapter in my latest book, Thomas Jefferson – Revolutionary.) There's also quite a bit of "they're responsible for not having their novel ideas sooner" in criticism of 18th-century American/Western men.

I'll add to this comment that I don't quite understand the psychology driving people to join in this public breast-beating about their supposed (though not actual) moral superiority to the people who made the American Revolution. I'm trying to be charitable, but every potential explanation that occurs to me isn't positive.

"Beautiful. I'd say learning American history from non-crazy people is more urgent than usual these days."