To judge from my own blog’s hit count, readers have been disappointed in my failure to mark this year’s Juneteenth. In truth, I knew little specific about the holiday until enlightened by Jamelle Bouie’s column in the New York Times today.
Measured against the depths of African-Americans’ four centuries of hardship and suffering, Juneteenth may seem a minor holiday. The practical effect of its emancipation was, after all, limited to Texas.
But this year Juneteenth takes on great symbolic significance. It comes amidst the worst presidency in our history, a massive neglect of working people for profit, the worst pandemic in a century (with African-Americans its worst victims), and an atrocious spate of police murders and brutality that has left all of us, regardless of race, fed up. Perhaps the hardship to which all of us are now subject has made the majority more empathetic toward Africans and their descendants, who’ve been oppressed by design since our Founding.
In elucidating the meaning of Juneteenth, Mr. Bouie focuses on African-Americans’ contributions to their own liberation. But their valiant struggle and its achievements should lead none of us to think they should “take it from here.” The economic and social inequality under which many suffer is still far too great for the rest of us to expect them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
We did that a century and a half ago, when we denied each just-freed slave family forty acres and a mule. And here we are.
I hope and trust that the hardships through which we all are now suffering—if not all in equal measure—will bring about a progressive and egalitarian revolution this fall. But no such revolution will be complete without addressing Juneteenth and its broken promises.
It’s far from enough for us to reform our police to stop the brutality and wanton murders. That would be a bare minimum. This moment demands that the white and the wealthy attempt the impossible: to atone for and reverse the consequences of four centuries of near-continuous atrocities unjustly directed at a single group among us.
We must make reparation. Not the token, one-time, one-size-fits-all grants for the four-year Japanese Internment. This four centuries of horrors requires something like a domestic Marshall Plan. We need an ongoing program to lift up communities of the descendants of slaves, recognize and nurture their human potential, and overcome the enduring legacies of slavery once and for all.
As a people founded on the principle that “all men are created equal,” what can we say if we fail? Can we look at ourselves in the mirror and claim that the last, best hope of mankind has learned anything since the Pharaohs enslaved the Jews? To me, that’s the meaning and the challenge of Juneteenth this year—a year steeped in tragedy, yet also in hope.
[For a recent post on the risks of flying during the pandemic, click here.]
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