Juneteenth

Recently a measure passed Congress (with some Republican opposition, of course) and signed into law by President Biden to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

Juneteenth is the commemoration of when  Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, backed by 2,000 soldiers, arrived in Galveston Texas and issued General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, informing the people of Texas that “all slaves were free.”

A quarter of a million slaves were free two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and more than two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. 

June 19, 1865 marked the end of slavery in the United States of America. 

And no bad things ever happened to black people in America ever again, the end. 

Of course I'm being facetious. 

Even as Juneteenth gains federal recognition...

• The fight for voting rights rages on.  Republican led legislatures are waging war on the rights and freedoms of people of color to vote.
• A law against lynching is stalled in Congress. A law in the 21st century against lynching can't get passed in Congress.
• And lawmakers in several states have banned teachers from talking about racism.

That latter point is push back against something called "critical race theory".   

In the 1970s, a group of scholars and legal practitioners began exploring the role the legal system plays in exclusionary and discriminatory practices. Kimberlé Crenshaw who coined the term "critical race theory" was among another group that met in 1989 to build on the work begun in the 1970s.

Crenshaw describes critical race theory as attending "not only to law’s transformative role which is often celebrated, but also to its role in establishing the very rights and privileges that legal reform was set to dismantle.” 

In short, let's look at who we are, how did we get here and how can we do better going forward.

Seems reasonable enough to me. Who in their right mind could possibly be against that?

Republicans are all "we ain't putting up with that shit".

Egged on by (of course) Donald Trump, "critical race theory"  is an affront to American exceptionalism. It makes us look bad. 

So a number of laws have been passed in state legislatures to curtail, limit and restrict any classroom teaching on the subject of racism. 

It's not like our education system was doing a whole lot on the subject. There was certainly a gap in my education. 

Until maybe 5 years ago or so, I never heard of Juneteenth. 

I guess like most white people, we're taught Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and freed the slaves and that took care of that.  

Make no mistake: Lincoln was an honorable man who did a honorable thing. But the idea that with a stroke of a pen, slaves were freed is a legend.   

Juneteenth is an embarrassment to that legend. Slavery was too ingrained to be eliminated by any single action, no matter how noble. It took time. It took the Union winning the goddam Civil War over the Confederacy. It took sending Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, backed by 2,000 soldiers, to Galveston Texas  to tell the last slave holders to cut it out already.

Then it took years of struggle to gain acceptance that those freed slaves and their descendants were worthy of the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is a struggle that is not quite over. 

Conservatives do not care for this truth.  

Conservatives do love their simple solutions to problems. 

Lincoln freed the slaves! Problem solved! 

America elected a black President! Racism is over! 

Indubitably, it is never that easy.

But apparently the analysis and understanding of the struggle for freedom from discrimination is considered by Republicans as a message of hate for America.  

Understanding what may be wrong in America is not a repudiation of America. It is not a contradiction to love America and see that it can be better. 

Juneteenth is such a reminder.  The journey that began with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation culminates with the day when Maj. Gen. Granger rode into Galveston with the freeing of the last of America's slaves.   

Juneteenth is the beginning of a journey to challenge the ideals of America, to fight for and establish that  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the right of all Americans regardless of the color of their skin. 

Hiding from our history and the effects on our nation today is the epitome of cowardice.  

Looking honestly and critically at who we were, who we are and who we are going to be is a process uniquely suited to American ideals, the freedom to make our lives better, our country better and our world a better place. 

A recently completed mural in Galveston TX celebrating Juneteenth