Ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid set off fireworks among conservatives for her criticism of the Fourth of July ― a holiday that Black people she knows “aren’t really excited about.” (Watch the video below.)

In a conversation posted Friday with ex-colleague Alex Wagner, who still works for the renamed MS NOW, Reid played off Wagner’s excerpt from an 1850s speech by abolitionist Frederick Douglass decrying the celebration:

“Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. ... The Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn.”

Wagner finally asked Reid about the “despotic authoritarian way” President Donald Trump “is celebrating the Declaration of Independence” for its 250th birthday.

Reid, who now has a show on YouTube, replied: “In many ways ― and with apologies to my dear spicy white friends because I know my white brothers and sisters do love a Fourth of July. It is Independence Day. Everybody’s barbecuing. It’s a thing. I can promise you Black folks, we will take that day off. We will barbecue because we off. But Black people ― nobody Black I know is really excited about the Fourth of July cause it is what Frederick Douglass said it is. It is the celebration of slaveholders who freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the Crown for their slave empire.”

“For Black people, particularly for African Americans, there’s a duality to Fourth of July that is hard to reconcile if you think about it too much,” she continued. “Juneteenth to me is the real thing that Fourth of July is because we really were not a democracy until we ended slavery. And then we were really not a democracy until the people who lost the Civil War were finally forced to affirm and act upon the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.” (Those reconstruction amendments ended slavery and established civil rights.)

Reid’s comments triggered extreme reactions from conservatives, who accused her of hating America, called her ignorant and accused her of embracing fake victimhood. They also said she was racist.

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