Today is Malia Ann Obama’s 22nd birthday and it’s the only birthday Black Twitter is set on acknowledging this 4th of July. Much like how the only Christopher we acknowledge on Christopher Columbus Day is Wallace.
The Harvard student and daughter of Former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama is being revered with Happy Malia Obama Day tweets instead.
“So we all have come to an agreement that July 4th is now Malia Obama Day? Okay. Got it,” one Twitter user tweeted.
Though Fourth of July is traditionally commemorated as a day in history when the United States declared its independence from England with colorful displays of grandiose fireworks on the beach, hot dogs galore, and American flag-waving, this year things are a tad bit different.
As police officers continue to go unpunished for killing unarmed Black people, white women continue to call the cops on Black people, immigrant children remain locked in cages under ICE, and other acts, it makes it hard to happily celebrate Independence Day.
Frederick Douglass’ family members reiterated this point recently by reciting the late slave abolishment leader’s Fourth of July speech on slavery in a video with NPR.
According to the research of documentary filmmaker Arlen Parsa, most of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders and he created a graphic to visually display this actuality.
While white men were free, Black people were not. When slaves were finally freed with the passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865, also known as the Emancipation Proclamation, the iron-fisted Jim Crow laws followed, giving birth to systemic racism.
“It is Malia Obama’s birthday, besides that, it is a regular day, nothing special about it at all, another Saturday,” another Twitter user quipped.
Check out some more tweets of Black Twitter celebrating Malia Obama Day below.