The truth of the matter, known only to the mother and father, is that the status quo of racist policies prohibited the Lords from dining in the car. Lorde appeals to the reader's pathos by subconsciously creating empathy for Lorde as she struggles with her parents who are not truthful about the fundamental aspect of mid-1900s American society: racism. Furthermore, the use of situational irony is astutely expressed in Lorde's interpretation of her family's trip to Washington DC: “…the waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never had in Washington DC it was white and the white heat and the white floor and the white stone monuments of my first summer in Washington made me nauseous…” (par. 24). Using vivid imagery of how Lorde perceives her recently awakened sense of actual reality, she is able to express her understanding of the uncomfortable disparity between superior whites and inferior blacks. Unlike her jaded parents, Lorde expected the capital of the United States to uphold the same virtues it was founded on: liberty, equality, freedom. Ironically, he finds Washington DC to be full of inherent discrimination. Hence Lorde's brazen irony in the title of her essay: “The Fourth of July.” The Fourth of July is supposed to represent the day America's founders broke away from oppressive British rule to celebrate the birth of a free land. Paradoxically, they created a more oppressive regime than the British. The racist foundation of the new nation will not be revealed until Thomas Jefferson's implication of the phrase “all men are created equal” in the Constitution is understood. These “men” refer strictly to the elite men who conquered this new land of America – property-owning white men. Therefore, women and people of color were not recognized as entities with inalienable rights. Founding a