let’s talk about juneteenth…
listen up, i’m gonna say what i have to say nice and respectfully, so y’all can understand and be educated. i’m in no way the spokes person for all black people, but i’m using the small voice that i do have in hopes that everyone will still amplify it and help me educate.
for those who are unaware, juneteenth (first officially celebrated june 19th 1866) is the date the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. note that this was two and a half years after president lincoln’s emancipation proclamation – which had become official january 1, 1863. but guess what? it took two years for it to reach the texan slaves.
and even then, it wasn’t like slaves just chucked up the peace sign to their masters and walked out. some slave lives were threatened by their owners if they even thought about leaving. whites and blacks didn’t just join hands and sing kumbayah together. work still needed to be done. they weren’t out of the woods just yet and we still aren’t today.
it wasn’t until 2021 that juneteenth was made a federal holiday. but if you’re wondering why so many are feeling negatively toward it becoming a holiday, it’s basically because we feel gaslighted in a sense. we asked for extensive voting rights protections, job training, anti-lynching laws, criminal justice system overhaul and reparations and so much more. but all it seems like is that white folks gave themselves another day off work. true definition of “what we asked for” vs “what we got”.
and before you say we should just be happy it’s being recognized, let me tell you something. black folks had already recognized and celebrated it for decades. as candice benbow, a cultural commentator stated: we were still gonna have our festivals, pageants, cookouts, fish fry’s, and gatherings (small or not). we didn’t need to be given a day off work to do stuff we were already gonna do. we needed you to actually do something to change the conditions of our lives.
as much as i love all my bipoc’s (black, indigenous, people of color) this is a black holiday. not a bipoc one. show your support for the black community please. below are some images from instagram with some information on what juneteenth as a holiday means, and what you can do to show your support (cred is tagged in each pic):
just a quick note: if you’re white, please don’t be performative. don’t wear a t-shirt with juneteenth on it or anything because it will be a problem for most. don’t constantly feel like you need to show everyone you’ve donated to organizations or the community and that you’re an ally. there’s no need to prove that you are “one of the good whites”, so don’t be more of an activist than the black community. it’s rude, distasteful, and frankly, annoying as hell. trust me when i say this:
you are not more “woke” than us, and you never will be.
