Juneteenth and the definition of freedom
Image: Workable.com
In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing more than three million slaves in the Confederate states. Despite this, it wasn’t until two years later on 19 June 1865, that many slaves learned about their freedom when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas. The following year, and for many years afterwards, Juneteenth became an annual tradition for many African Americans across the United States.
On 17 June 2021, President Joe Biden signed Juneteenth into federal law as an official national holiday to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. While many hailed this as a great achievement, I didn’t feel the same excitement for this gesture. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before my cynicism was partially justified. Corporate (White) America wasted no time in finding ways to profit off of Juneteenth, taking things as far as trademarking the term to ensure maximum integration into the holiday money-making machine.
Even before this, however, from my perspective as a first-generation Caribbean American, I viewed this sudden effort to mainstream Juneteenth with skepticism. It felt like an elaborate PR stunt with a tagline that shouted: “See, we’re good people now. Here, have a national holiday.”
I couldn’t help but ask myself, what are we really celebrating? Where exactly is this ‘freedom’ that they speak of? After all, the original Juneteenth was immediately followed by the Reconstruction Era where multitudes of former slaves struggled to integrate into a society where racism was still rampant and deep-seeded, bringing about the birth of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Then of course, there was the Jim Crow Era that saw the enforcement of laws systematizing racial segregation in the Southern states, and essentially making Black Americans second class citizens.
So I ask again - where exactly is this ‘freedom’?
It feels like this ‘freedom’ will always be accompanied with an inconvenient fine print and is comparable to wandering for 40 years in the desert. But the powers that be would have you think that this country, where Black people are repeatedly gunned down by police and White supremacists; new voter restriction laws will disproportionately harm voters of color; Black business owners still consistently face discriminatory practices and lending biases from financial institutions; Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly 5 times the rate of White Americans with disproportionately higher sentencing, is the PROMISED LAND…
SHOP THE CHANGEMAKER COLLECTION