In a pointed column for the Guardian US, Jamil Smith argues that the 250th anniversary of American independence is a comfortable fiction, as the nation remains broken and in need of repair. Smith contends that the founding document's promises of equality were contradicted by the institution of slavery, and a truer account of American freedom begins with 1619 and Juneteenth.
Public Dissatisfaction and Supreme Court Rulings
Smith notes that according to the Pew Research Center, 69% of Americans were dissatisfied with the country's direction early this year, calling this clear vision rather than ingratitude. In the days before July 4, the US Supreme Court delivered a mixed diagnosis: it preserved birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment but loosened guardrails against corruption and weakened equal protection.
Smith describes the US not as a finished monument but as a structure still under repair, contested, and in places being stripped for parts. He defines repair as the unglamorous work of protecting democracy and civil rights, building affordable housing, limiting the power of money, and preserving public memory.
Birthright Citizenship Upheld but Threatened
The court blocked the president's executive order to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented and temporary residents, with a 6-3 vote. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her concurrence, called the Reconstruction amendments "an anticaste, antisubordination reset," not a mere spot treatment. Smith emphasizes that the citizenship clause was a repair after Dred Scott and the Civil War, not a gift from the founders.
However, the president immediately called the ruling "too bad for our Country" and urged Congress to end birthright citizenship, despite the constitutional barrier. Justice Brett Kavanaugh left a door open for Congress to carve out exceptions by statute, highlighting how a repair can be upheld in the morning and marked for demolition by nightfall.
Memory as Repair and the Thomas Dissent
Smith argues that memory itself is a form of repair, citing Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Sites as examples of memory as infrastructure. He criticizes Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent, which recast the 14th Amendment as a narrow favor to freed slaves, while Jackson warned against pitting Black Americans against immigrants.
Campaign Finance and Discrimination Rulings
The court also struck down decades-old limits on party spending in coordination with candidates, removing a guardrail meant to prevent representation from becoming a market. Additionally, the court upheld state laws barring transgender girls from girls' sports, which Smith calls permission to discriminate rather than equal protection.
Material Repair and Political Action
Smith points to a rare bipartisan housing bill passed by Congress to make homes more affordable, but the president canceled the signing ceremony, calling it "a big yawn" and prioritizing a voting restriction bill he deemed a "National Emergency." Smith concludes that celebration will not house people or protect voters; the answer is to name plainly what is being damaged and by whom, then get busy fixing it. He ends with the line: "A republic does not survive because its people praise it. It survives because they repair it."
