The Meaning of Freedom

I found following sequence of quotes sadly very true..

"Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries"

"At last it came,--suddenly, fearfully, like a dream."

"Years have passed away since then,--ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life...and the nation was not yet found peace from it's sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land." (7)

For decades before the emancipation act slaves could think of little else but trying to earn their freedom, or to somehow make it north. Freedom in their minds was the ticket to a comfortable life, the American dream. And who could blame them? anyone or anything that is trapped wishes freedom above all else. It's instinctive. But then, once all the slaves are freed and the civil war over, the benefits and success that most thought freedom would bring did not come. The nation was still rooted to it's prejudices, still today even. We form stereotypes and create irrational reasons to segregate ourselves. It's sad. America is definitely the land of the free but in what sense? We can never be truly free of our ingrained search for belonging and acceptance, our tendency to disassociate from people who are different.

Web du Bois mentions the "deep disappointment" of the African American people and their new lifestyles. This freedom was not much of a freedom at all in all meaning of the word. They had choices, but very little rights, very little room to exercise their newfound choice. Gains during the civil rights movement eased some of this unequal freedom, but still, today not everyone is free, not everyone has an equal opportunity , education and hard work can help, but it's sadly not going to work every time. There is always something else in the way. And it may not be race or gender or anything like that. It cold be family, money, laws even and bad luck in general.

So what is freedom? Even in the less extreme example of the emancipation...are people really free? or do they just transfer themselves from one cage to the next. It can be literal or mental. Everything provides a wall. Government laws, societal pressure, our backgrounds and family values, our own minds. I just think it's interesting to contemplate the meaning of freedom for a while. It seems like the more I think about it, the less free I feel. It reminds me of Nietzsche and his ideas about trapping the mind and how society keeps us in a cage. It seems like there is always something to be escaping from. Whether it's something major like literal slavery or something minor like escaping the pressure we feel to dress a certain way or maintain a certain composure.