Belated 4th of July

To all of you Americans, want to be Americans, soon will be Americans and just people interested in America, we as a country celebrated our 235th birthday this past Monday.  It got me thinking.  We celebrated the WHITE celebration of this country's birth.  Not so much our Native brethren (approximately 16000-13000 years), or our Latino brothers and sisters (494 years), or our Scandinavian homies (930 years give or take a decade).  All that work previous to 1776, totally ignored.

Lian's last bit of social studies homework before she was released into my custody for the summer (yay) wanted her to answer a very broad question with a short and sweet text book answer.  "What created the birth of the United States?"  They wanted "The American Revolution".  And yes I realize she's only in 1st grade so you have to keep it a little simple, but I honestly want to know why is it just THAT particular event that defined the people on this portion of the continent as a nation?  We weren't unified when it was done.  There was still the 'us versus them' mentality against non-whites and even people in a different states, parish or county.  The white population didn't truly 'unite as one', so to speak, until well after the American Civil War.  Is THAT when we were 'born' as a unified nation?  Then why not wait until immigrants could apply for citizenship, women could legally vote in federal and state elections uniformly, segregation eliminated permanently in the 1960s, or does this process only happen in war?

I broke my daughter's brain when I asked her that.  She had NO idea what I was talking about.  I broke Ollie, Dinah, Connor and Dick's brains too. Apparently they aren't used to me deep thinking.  Mia actually argued with me that it's symbolic.  It's when the WORLD acknowledged America as a sovereign nation, separate from Great Britain and other nations.

I can get behind that. Go US!  Get it?  US?  U.S.?

...
 Never mind, you buncha slackers.  I'm going to go shoot pointy things at a bunch of circles and teach my daughter how to not pass out in 100 degree heat. :P

RH