Juneteenth Reflection
This year Lucille Clifton’s famous 1993 poem, “won’t you celebrate with me,” came to mind throughout Juneteenth as I reflected on what the special occasion means to me as a queer Black American woman [with both Black and Indigenous American roots]. Clifton wrote,“come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” Intersectionality and the adversity that comes along with it on a daily basis have me not only recognizing how every day that I am still here is worth celebrating, but also vowing to live freely and authentically in all the ways my ancestors never got the chance to. I am amazed by Black people every single day because I, in so many ways, am the product of Black liberation. On Juneteenth I honor my people, dead and alive alike, daring and resilient enough to keep going— starting anew and building from scratch, fighting for freedom, finding and loving each other, holding space for legacy and tradition, and celebrating our lives when these actions are made difficult for us to do so; this is and always will be revolutionary.
Our essence is worthy of celebration. With that being said, it was a beautiful weekend. It was a healing weekend. A moment in time, that I cannot stress enough, was not given to me; and/or sloppily [and performatively] thrown my way. Black Americans honor our ancestors on the day we reclaimed. We deserve healing moments inside every moment. We deserve our days to gather, to cry, to scream and release— the pain, the pleasure. We deserve to feel and express emotions freely, because they are our own to feel. We deserve to dance— in the sun or in the rain and move our bodies however we wish. We deserve days, every day actually, to live freely in our own autonomy; to reject inferiority complexes forced upon us, and to reject labor— which was forced upon us as well. Juneteenth’s history [our Black American history] is history of reclaiming our identity [no longer slaves], and the spirit validating itself as truly free. We have that right. Captors, colonists, abusers, enslavers [and their descendants] do not.
After one of the cruelest summers that we had last year, Juneteenth as a federal holiday in the United States of America, is the slap in the face as well as the joke that wrote itself. How is slavery being recognized, without reparations being recognized [and coughed up immediately] as well? How do we acknowledge slavery, and not also acknowledge the fact that it hasn’t really ended; how do we not then acknowledge the racist state of this country? What about the Prison Industrial Complex? White people [still] think they have the power to validate, and acknowledge, the basic right of freedom for others. This has been a huge constant. This has been the pattern. What has changed? Still just as bold— wicked and brash, still just as performative, just as violent— as forceful as everything else, just as much gaslighting, just as audacious. As audacious as the idea, and gall, to ‘own’ and treat human beings as property— to exchange with currency; so much so that humanity is validated as well… audacious to believe one has that right. So, by definition of holiday, a day fixed by law or custom on which ordinary business is suspended in commemoration of some event or in honor of some person; what we will not do, is share. Juneteenth is a day of mixed emotions for Black Americans from the cradle to the grave. Feelings we are rarely given space to express— living different lives than our ancestors yet still enduring generational traumas. That is who we share Juneteenth with— our ancestors, and each other. We don’t celebrate anyone’s validation of our freedom. Juneteenth being shared with anyone who benefits from slavery [across generations], is an oxymoron. White people excusing themselves of labor, and slavery, on the literal day that represents how much they refused to let go [of chattel slavery]? It’s ironic, yet very on-brand. This entire system was not only legal but is able to be transformed. Systemic racism is just as inexcusable today as it always has been. Until its dismantlement, in which white people acknowledge, and no longer benefit from white supremacy; the performative activism we are seeing right now [producing no real, tangible changes to racial inequality] is a lulled whisper and distraction from rightfully owed, complete, and true Black liberation. Observing and making a day “official,” that was already official and being celebrated by those directly affected, renaming streets and parks, setting up statues of Black victims of police brutality while refusing to defund and/or abolish police, while not holding guilty cops and perpetrators of the unjust system accountable; while refusing to enact an anti-lynching bill, while there is no acknowledgement or attempts to end voter suppression, while the fight to ban critical race theory in schools persists, while reparations legislation is still being debated, while the disproportionate impact of COVID on the Black community continues, while an imperialist government reigns… being gaslighted in this way is the Black American experience.
Like Pride [in how marginalized people with longstanding history of being violently excluded celebrate themselves living freely and authentically as a means of rebelling against oppressive systems], oppressors have now corrupted and commercialized Juneteenth. White people crafted the appalling circumstances in which Juneteenth came about but, no amount of forcing their way into things, rewriting history, stealing and appropriating what does not belong to them, could ever take away what this day means to us— our ability to overcome. We celebrate because all the things that try to kill our spirit have failed. For us, by us. I hope we continue to make Juneteenth as exclusive as possible. I hope no matter how we choose to celebrate and honor ourselves, that on Juneteenth we feel our Blackest, our proudest, and most importantly, our freest. We deserve that.
