For somewhere between the last 5 to 10 years I have tried to share articles about Juneteenth & express my hope that it becomes a national holiday, an independence day as revered as July 4th. Today I want to explain what Juneteenth means to me, esp since I'm not Black +
When I first went to Ghana as a graduate student, I remember seeing celebrations of emancipation day and realizing that they were celebrating the British end of slavery but (as I wrongly believed) there was no corresponding American holiday +
It took a few years before I learned of Juneteenth. And the need to celebrate it seemed obvious and irrefutable. How could America celebrate freedom without celebrating the self-emancipation of the formerly enslaved? This was the most profound freedom there was +
Founding fathers had compared British rule to enslavement, which places July 4th (a small increase in political freedom for a small number of people) in the shadow of Juneteenth! The theoretical abstract argument in favor of Juneteenth was pretty clear +
But I also had personal reasons for wanting the holiday as well. By this point, I was out of graduate school & working and living in places (and at a time) where I could see the way my own personal freedoms were very much tied to the freedoms of black and indigenous people +
After 9/11, I got profiled. I got followed by the police for miles as I drove, and pulled over on some minor technicality as an excuse to run my info through the system. (NOTE while this was not fun, I was treated w far more courtesy than if I had been black & never threatened) +
Once, in Alabama I went for a jog through what used to be the main black business district. After I made it through a couple of white gentrified streets, I got pulled over. Somebody had made a false report alleging a "black man in a red shirt" was looking in windows +
Soon another cop arrived after a call that "a black man had been rifling through mail" The homeowners had blatantly lied (I ran right down the yellow line) & what saved me was that I didn't fit the description & bc I wasn't black this mattered +
Before 9/11 I grew up believing what I was taught in my elementary & high schools, white liberal institutions, that racial progress was slow but inevitable & substantial. After 9/11 & I was reminded daily of how much I would be prejudged by others (& the state) bc of my skin +
At the same time, I was learning more Black history, more of what America's history truly was. Some of this was courtesy of @AlvinBTilleryJr who was very patient with me when I showed up in his office just after I first learned about the Tulsa Massacre & who schooled me a lot +
Other bits of learning came on the internet, from books & podcasts, and from other Black friends. Living in Montgomery AL and being invited into Black spaces was an education in and of itself +
Heck, just visiting Tuskegee, looking at the statues, listening to the tour guides, reading the displays, going to the museums & the national park site ... that was a whole education too +
All of this made it abundantly clear that even if I was a completely selfish political actor that my own freedoms & treatment by the state was inextricably bound up with how Black and Indigenous people were treated (and also how much I had benefitted from this system) +
So yes, because I believe in Democracy & Freedom, I believe in deeply celebrating Emancipation. And because, both as an American & as a SouthAsian-American my own freedom & rights are the result of centuries of Black political struggle END
