Ah, Juneteenth.
Juneteenth has been one of my favorite days since I was a kid. I didn’t grow up celebrating the holiday, but we certainly acknowledged it. Especially since my hometown (the Twin Cities) put on an annual Juneteenth celebration in Minneapolis. I never attended, but my mom utilized the event announcements on the radio as an opportunity to teach me a bit about Juneteenth and its significance in the Black community. Learning about the importance of the holiday was all I needed for it to become one of my favorite days. Even though I had never celebrated it and knew little about its traditions like drinking strawberry pop and eating red velvet cake, if my community valued it, then it held significance for me as well.
I always had an affinity toward anything exclusive to the Black community. HBCUs, Kwanzaa, Black History Month, even the NAACP…anything created by and for us filled me with immense pride in being Black. Though I never participated in an official celebration, the fact that Juneteenth came around on my calendar every June 19th was enough for me to be elated. I never expected the rest of the country to one day acknowledge Juneteenth, let alone make it a federal holiday. My expectations around what our country recognized, or even honored, in regards to Black history have always been slim. I grew up in predominately white spaces and Black history was rarely mentioned beyond Martin Luther King, Jr. Well, I take that back. My high school U.S. History course briefly covered the Jim Crow Era, and during my freshman year, our predominantly white school in Minnesota staged a play predominantly featuring Black actors, an experience I had the privilege of participating in. I was aware that my high school’s willingness to do such was extraordinary and proof that my school was beyond its time. However, my overall expectations of society’s acknowledgment of anything significant to my community were null. I anticipated experiencing that celebration of my community and culture primarily through my church and other Black-specific groups and organizations I was involved with as a child.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to feel frustration toward the white dominance of our society. I think I may have felt similarly as a child, but I didn’t know that it could or even should change. I just accepted it. I grew up believing that white dominance was the norm, assuming that it was the way America ought to be. And, as long as we had our Black spaces to honor, celebrate, and openly revel in our culture, I was good. I had the distinct privilege of attending Howard University, which is a Historically Black University in Washington, DC, so, for four years, my world was nothing but a jubilation of my Blackness. For a while, I forgot that I would have to re-enter the white-dominant world and return to being forgotten, overlooked, and discarded. But, by the time I returned to that world, I had been empowered by my university experience and realized that my culture and my history is American culture and history. It should not be separate or othered. It should be regarded on par with every other American cultural tradition, practice, or holiday. I felt my anger growing when Juneteenth went unrecognized by my 'multi-racial' evangelical church, while the 4th of July received as much reverence as the birth of Jesus. Not only did the lavish celebration of the 4th of July, on par with the birth of Christ, unsettle me, but the church's enthusiastic observance of a day symbolizing genocide and enslavement for Black and Indigenous people, without acknowledging Juneteenth just a month earlier, ignited a righteous anger in me that I had never experienced before. It wasn’t long before my nonchalant lack of expectation in society’s recognition of my culture turned into a moral outrage for the complete disregard for my community.
Still, I kept that moral outrage to myself for years. Juneteenth was still one of my favorite days simply for being integral to my culture, but it didn’t garner the same excitement from me that it used to. As a kid, I would feel overjoyed to merely hear the Juneteenth events announced on the radio. Now, the more I kept to myself, the better. Keeping to myself allowed me to exist freely in my anger without the need to fake a smile to placate the white gaze.
I never anticipated the day would come when Juneteenth would become a federal holiday.
Three years ago, I wrote a post on Instagram that instantly went viral. I had never experienced virality before, but if there was any post to go viral, I am beyond glad it was this one. Right when President Biden announced that Juneteenth had officially become a federal holiday in the United States, I was overcome with emotion and felt an urgent need to express my thoughts and feelings in an Instagram post. It said, “So, Juneteenth is a federal holiday. Now what?” I proceeded to write some do’s and dont’s in regards to the observance of Juneteenth.
See, white supremacy often (and, by often, I mean always) causes white people to believe that they are automatically entitled to everything. We see this with Halloween costumes — white people are often enraged when they are told that dressing up in Indigenous attire is inappropriate and racist. We see this with the term “woke,” as this was a term utilized within the Black community to spread awareness about racism and to warn our brethren when to be on high alert. White people have done what they do best with that term — steal it, misuse it, and abuse it. Now, the term woke is used to refer to anything that has to do with Blackness, DEI, anti-racism, etc. Just the other day, a white woman on Facebook was calling the Juneteenth flag a “woke” flag and claiming that the observance of Juneteenth only exists to spread the “hidden agenda” that America is still a racist country. This is what happens when white people get a hold of Black things. Or, anything that’s not meant for them. A society and culture of white supremacy tells them that everything should belong to them and to steal it by any means necessary. Steal it, misuse it, abuse it, and most likely, use it to further their racism.
I was afraid of this when Juneteenth first became a federal holiday, which inspired my viral post. America is not used to the observance or celebration of something that is not white-dominant. White America doesn’t know how to allow for something to not center them. I feared that our precious holiday would no longer be something that we could safely and joyfully observe due to white fragility and violence. On the other hand, I wanted nothing more than for my country to observe and celebrate my culture. My culture and my people who built this country with their bare hands. My culture and my people who, without our contributions, we would not have much of the beloved American culture that we have today. Our existence, joy, history, pain, and humanity should not be minimized to just one month out of the year that was also barely recognized. We are just as American as anyone else and our holidays, cultures, traditions, and celebrations deserve to be honored as such. So, I wrote a post expressing my desire for the official observance of this holiday to do nothing but bring joy, peace, and rest for my people and inspire every American to reckon with their history just as we do with any other American holiday.
It’s been three years. I know — that’s not that long. But, in three short years, so much has happened to prove that, once again, when white supremacy is challenged, white supremacy will find a way to backlash. The federal observance of Juneteenth is a challenge to white supremacy. It is a federal holiday that requires at least acknowledgement by the majority of Americans, even if it’s just knowing why you have the day off, that does not center whiteness. The only other federal holiday that does not center whiteness is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And, unfortunately, that observed day has become a day where whiteness has found a way to be centered and racism has found a way to be amplified. Just check out Bernice King’s social media every 3rd Monday in January. When white supremacy is challenged, white supremacy becomes emboldened. And, I fear that is what has happened since Juneteenth’s official federal recognition.
Since Juneteenth became a federal holiday, officially observed as Juneteenth National Independence Day, nine states have signed anti-DEI legislation into law and 16 states have introduced anti-DEI legislation. If those 16 states sign their legislation into law, 25 states will have made it illegal to serve and support the descendants of the enslaved people we remember on Juneteenth. Not only is this inhumane and flat-out racist, but it denies the fact that the legacy of slavery still exists within the systems, policies, disparities, and culture of our country. As of January of this year, 18 states have bans against teaching “critical race theory,” which is just coded for Black history. Critical Race Theory was never taught at the primary education level, but now any teaching that discusses the truth and legacy of racism in the United States, specifically as it pertains to Black History, is now banned from the classroom. Eighteen states have made it illegal to teach the history behind the latest federal holiday that all of those racist policymakers will happily enjoy having the day off for. In 2022, just a year after Juneteenth’s federal recognition, Project 2025 was devised as a think-tank proposal by the far-right aimed at undermining our democracy. While the project discusses everything from plans to upend climate change progress to economic policy, it also aims to eliminate any federal regulation that has to do with sexual orientation, gender equality, reproductive rights, abortion, and, of course, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Once again, white supremacy has found a way to re-embold itself and make sure the backlash is heard. Now, of course, this is not strictly due to Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday. This is a response to all of the “racial reckoning” of 2020 that caused the world to put black squares on their Instagram pages and proceed to do nothing. But, one of the positive results from that reckoning was a little day in the middle of June that has been one of my favorite days since I can remember becoming a nationally recognized holiday. And, as the lady on Facebook proved to me as she angrily commented on every post that the town I live in wrote to advertise its Juneteenth celebration, not everyone is happy about it.
So, we come back to the question I posed on Instagram three years ago: now what? This question feels heavier this time around. Weightier. We are amid a harsh white supremacist backlash that is not going anywhere any time soon. We will likely continue to witness more bans, more racism, and many people who think this holiday is “woke” enjoying the day off. How do we observe and honor this day when this is what we are up against? How do we commemorate our history when our history is banned from classrooms, organizations, and conversations? How do we maintain our joy when our joy is still seen as a threat?
We do what we always do: we resist.
We honor anyway.
We celebrate anyway.
We dance anyway.
We have joy anyway.
We commemorate our liberation from chattel slavery while remaining mindful that true freedom still eludes us.
And we fight on.
No matter how hard white supremacy fights back, we fight on.
As long as we do not stop fighting, white supremacy will not have the final say.
Our freedom will.
I enjoy your writing; my prayers are with you! Keep speaking as the Lord leads you.