As a New Yorker, I didn’t learn of Juneteenth until I was a teenager and was absolutely dumbfounded by the audacity of white people keeping the news of our freedom to themselves for years after emancipation. It was then that I also learned of how decades earlier slave owners had
kept the news of Haitian revolt and emancipation from other enslaved Africans in the diaspora for fear of inspiring new revolts. Now that apartheid in Israel and the conditions of mines in the Congo have become more common knowledge, the audacity of whiteness fits squarely
beneath the banner of corporate and imperial conquest as they attempt to justify inhumane conditions by either dehumanizing the subjects or shifting blame without acknowledging the role they have played in destabilizing governments to suit their needs. In an age where so much
attention is given to what shouldn’t be taught in schools, I am overwhelmed by how much we would need to add beyond the history of western conquest and supposed American heroism to achieve any true vision of the world that upholds the truth of Black and indigenous struggle
against white supremacy. No given holiday can excuse the fact that what they did then is still being attempted now. Black Americans comprise 9% of THE WORLDS prison population TODAY- yet it is the system that is criminal. What was cotton and tobacco then is oil, coltan, lithium,
rubber, coffee, sugar, chocolate, uranium, gold, diamonds, etc. now. So many of our supposed comforts in the west are derived from the oppressive conditions we demand of the global majority. So as I smile at all the beautiful expressions of Black joy today I also keep in mind
that Haiti, Sudan, New Caledonia, and so many more beckon us within the belly of the beast to shake this system to the mf ground.
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