Juneteeth 2021
Just FYI for all the people who are denouncing #Juneteenth as “performative” and are otherwise shaming those of us who (like me) are actually glad that it’s an official federal holiday in the US…some of us GREW UP celebrating it.
For some of us, it has been a state holiday for as long as we have been alive on this planet.
Some of us have many fond memories of times spent in Emancipation Park, which has been a gathering place for over a century; the Black community pooled its funds to buy the land in 1872 so people could have a place to commemorate Juneteenth and other important events since racist laws prevented PoC from being able to gather in public parks.
Some of us reside within less than an hour’s drive from the very streets of Galveston where, nearly three years after the Emancipation Proclamation, freedom was proclaimed in Texas, AT LAST.
Some of us get teary-eyed when we think of the lyrics of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”, a song many of us learned in childhood.
As the child of immigrants, I’m not a descendant of slaves. My family endured a different kind of oppressive hell, that of centuries of colonization. But I am STILL Black, which makes the story of Juneteenth MY story as part of the collective Black community even if it is not my family’s story.
I realize some of y’all never heard of Juneteenth a day in your life until 2020 and George Floyd. You can’t be faulted for what you don’t know, but please, please MISS ME with your condescending remarks about how “Black people don’t care about Juneteenth,” because respectfully, a few outspoken people in some FB group or on TikTok cannot be taken as the authority for what “Black people” want or don’t want.
The road to Juneteenth being designated a federal holiday has some VERY shady stuff on it, and people are justifiably skeptical of the motives behind it as well as the timing and other legitimate concerns. I don’t negate that.
And the nuances of racial dynamics and the Juneteenth narrative, etc. aren’t uniform from state to state. I get that too. It’s not everyone’s thing.
Some people derive no joy from this change. That’s their prerogative. However, I have absolutely ZERO tolerance today or any day for people who want to make snarky comments about how “silly” this all is.
It's extremely disrespectful to BLACK people who, like me, have lived in Texas and have a very different sentiment about this day than others might.
Happy Jubilee.