Celebrating our Enslavement

Another Juneteenth has come and gone. Every year, I'm horrified by the perpetuation of the day as a holiday Black people should celebrate. If there was ever a day that we should NOT celebrate, it's June 19th. For those how don't know the history of the day, Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another, is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another, is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All or none of them could be true. For whatever the reason, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory.

I'm not stupid enough to believe that there was no form of communication to Texas for two and a half years. I'm not stupid enough to celebrate a "holiday" just because slaves rejoiced in being freed. We should be fighting for legal restitution. If one white person were falsely imprisoned and then freed but no one told them about it for TWO AND A HALF YEARS, there would be a lawsuit the size of Texas on his behalf. Hell, he would own half of Texas after he got finished suing. Yes, I'm sure he would rejoice when he was freed but turning it into a holiday? Hell no. Rather than point out the injustice, we want to make it a national holiday. The insanity of it all is what confuses me.

I've spoken to Black people from Texas, who are the people who seem to celebrate it the most, and they insist that they celebrate it because that's what they were taught. Isn't this the same thing I hear every Thanksgiving when I bring up the fact that celebrating Thanksgiving is really celebrating the holocaust of 15 million Natives? Where's the common sense? The movement should be for reparations for every second of every day that Black people were enslaved past Jan 1st, 1963. The US government should be held accountable for its illegal actions. Texas landholders should be held accountable. The monies should go to education, housing, small business loans, and health care for Black Texans.

Can you imagine Jews celebrating the fact that people were left in concentration camps for two and a half years after they were freed? Can you imagine white people trying to deny Jews legal justice for anyone who was in that situation? Not only do we not want to hold the people who were responsible accountable, we want to have a party on top of it. It's so sinful it's a shame.