For Juneteenth, President Signs Executive Order to Use the "Black Test"

June 19th (Galveston, TX) – On June 19, 1865, General Order No. 3 was posted around the town of Galveston, TX, saying in part:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.

While short (it only continues for another sentence), the announcement began the process of finally freeing the slaves in the State of Texas and eventually throughout the entire Union. This course culminated on December 6, 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which fully banned slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States of America.

However, just because slavery officially ended, it did not mean discrimination was over. People of color faced lawful mistreatment through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and other despicable undertakings. While the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s would lead to official acts of bigotry being made unlawful; unofficially, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and prejudice have been allowed to flourish. Slow progress has certainly been made—even to the point of June 19th becoming an official federal holiday in 2021 under President Joe Biden—but it is still far from a level playing field.

How can fairness, equality, and equivalent opportunity be reached? Well, the President of the United States was in town for Juneteenth festivities and took some time to sit down with our reporters to explain what the administration and the country can do better. And being this particular President, our team was the happy recipient of a new Executive Order! Below is a partial transcript of that conversation, edited for brevity, content, and relevance.

Transcript of the Conversation Between GCDN and the President of the United States of America

GCDN: Thank you so much for sitting down with us today, in celebration of Juneteenth.

POTUS: It’s my pleasure, thanks for having me. I know it’s not a Friday, but I felt it important to talk with people on this historic day in the place where it all started.

GCDN: Has your once-a-week press day been working out for you and the administration?

POTUS: Like anything, it has its plusses and minuses. I do believe it has made things a lot calmer around the White House, but unfortunately it has also resulted in the media having a lot more incorrect assumptions and suppositions.

GCDN: Does that include us?

POTUS: It includes everyone. But here you get to have the story directly from the horse’s mouth, so please ask away!

GCDN: All right, let’s jump right into it. June 19th is an important day in African American hist—

POTUS: I don’t like that word.

GCDN: What word?

POTUS: African American.

GCDN: Excuse me?

POTUS: It puts the emphasis on the wrong noun.

GCDN: Would you prefer “black”, “people of color”, what?

POTUS: I would prefer “Americans of African Descent”. This would place the American part first and foremost.

GCDN: Why do you think that’s important?

POTUS: Because by placing a qualifier before American, it is setting people apart, making them “the other”. It makes it easier to dismiss people when you do not consider them part of the same collective. And that collective is being American.

GCDN: So “America first”, so to speak?

POTUS: Yes. The same thing for everyone else. Let’s not have “Dominican Americans”, “Japanese Americans”, and “Italian Americans”, but just Americans of Dominican, Japanese, and Italian descent. We’re all Americans!

GCDN: This is not the first time you have gone after language as a precursor to policy. You did something similar with an Executive Order back in February when you removed “college” from all official communications and replaced it with “further education”.

POTUS: Terminology is critical to how people think about things. Now that it is “further education”, it can mean a lot more, especially for channeling resources into our badly depleted trades fields.

GCDN: So that is what you are trying to do here? Change thought processes with a modification of the terminology?

POTUS: It certainly would help! Let’s look at a similar situation like with “gay marriage”. Instead of calling it that, what if we said we were interested in protecting “human rights for homosexuals”, of which marriage equality is one of them.

GCDN: What does this accomplish?

POTUS: It shifts the paradigm of the conversation. We are no longer talking about whether gay people should or should not have something. Instead, we are baselining it with the idea that there are these things we call “human rights”. Why would you keep a human right from anyone just because of their sexuality, gender, or gender identity?

GCDN: You are making it about taking things away instead of granting?

POTUS: Exactly, we start with the assumption that all people are humans and are Americans and that gives them certain inalienable rights. From there, it is much more difficult for the other side to say why that right should be restricted for just that group.

GCDN: Is that enough to make a lasting change?

POTUS: It is a component of change, but it is certainly not enough. Direct action is needed.

GCDN: Through legislation?

POTUS: I would recommend that, but have no control or much influence over Congress. We already have a lot of other issues we are going back-and-forth about right now, so I don’t want to push even more onto their plate.

GCDN: Through an Executive Order, then?

POTUS: Funny you should ask.

GCDN: You have a new Executive Order?

POTUS: I do. {The President then pulled out a ream of papers from a nearby bag and handed over a copy to our reporters.}

GCDN: This is a lot to go through.

POTUS: In legalese, it’s necessary to be so verbose, but let me walk you through the highlights.

GCDN: Please do!

POTUS: The crux is that I am requiring all Executive agencies to use the “black test” when evaluating laws, rules, policies, and the like, and where the Executive Branch needs to fight back against the Legislative one, and even the States.

GCDN: What is this “black test” you speak of?

POTUS: It’s a simple replacement mechanism. Let’s look at a so-called religious liberty situation. Someone says, “I won’t bake a cake for gay people because homosexuality is against my beliefs.”

GCDN: Right, this is a real situation that has happened.

POTUS: Okay, let’s do the replacement in that sentence. “I won’t bake a cake for black people because being black is against my beliefs.” How does that sound?

GCDN: It sounds racist.

POTUS: Exactly. Religious liberties do have limits; you should not be able to use your religion to discriminate against people. Yet that is exactly what Congress and the Supreme Court have allowed to happen. This mechanism provides a simple tool to tell if you have a legitimate religious objection or if you are simply being discriminatory and using your religion as a crutch to do so.

GCDN: Does this order require the Supreme Court and the lower courts to use this test?

POTUS: I can’t order the Judicial Branch to do anything, it’s outside of my purview. However, the order strongly suggests that they adopt the same logic.

GCDN: This is similar to your “Assessment of Harm” from the State of the Union?

POTUS: Yes, but this is one level down from that. At the top we put people, but how do you split that when the parties are claiming equal harm? For one person it is their freedom of expression, for the other person their religious rights. Both are equally protected by the First Amendment.

GCDN: It is a tension that has never been fully resolved.

POTUS: And that is a flaw of the Constitution and the Amendments, but we’ll have to put that aside for now. The bottom line is that this government has often put religious beliefs above all else, but there are dozens of other rights that have equal bearing in the Constitution and should be considered so. We need to reset the balance.

GCDN: Will you sign this right now?

POTUS: Sure, absolutely.

GCDN: Really?

POTUS: Watch me. {The President then signed the Executive Order and handed it over before a member of the staff came to take it away.} Everything in order?

GCDN: It certainly looks like it. This is quite an exclusive you’ve given us! Any other controversies you want to kick up?

POTUS: You want me to talk about Dan Patrick?

GCDN: The former Lieutenant Governor [of Texas]? He’s been out of office for a while. What about him?

POTUS: I actually think about him quite a lot.

GCDN: Why is that?

POTUS: Well, back at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, he was very vocally out there.

GCDN: You’re talking about his interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News?

POTUS: Ah, you remember!

GCDN: What about that interview in particular?

POTUS: Well, I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but basically, he said that people who were high risk or older should volunteer to die in order to save the economy.

GCDN: That seems a fair summary, although he was mostly talking about himself. He was saying he was willing to die to save the economy.

POTUS: But that was the wrong thought process.

GCDN: What was the right one?

POTUS: It is not a question of whether you are willing to sacrifice yourself, it is a question of how many people you are willing to kill.

GCDN: What do you mean?

POTUS: Think back to that time, before vaccines, before treatments, before everything we have now to mitigate diseases like this. We knew nothing except people got it, they were contagious and infected others, and then some of the newly infected died.

GCDN: So, what you are asking is...?

POTUS: How many people are you personally willing to murder in order to save the economy? One, two, ten?

GCDN: And what if Dan Patrick or someone like him was comfortable with, as you describe it, murdering others for the sake of the economy? And what if that number is a lot higher, like hundreds, thousands, or millions?

POTUS: If they are comfortable putting the economy over human life, they are entitled to that belief. However, they have to accept they are advocating for preventable homicide.

GCDN: That is something you obviously have a problem with, right?

POTUS: Whether I do or not is besides the point; I’m simply laying out the facts. And fact is that if we take people like this at their word, then that means that they value the economy so much that they are willing to murder others to protect it.

GCDN: But is there a line where you would pass judgement?

POTUS: No, someone like Dan Patrick can only judge themselves. All they need to do is ask themselves, “How many murders is my threshold?” Simple as that.

GCDN: That’s a pretty inflammatory allegation you are making there. Are you concerned about hearing from Dan Patrick?

POTUS: Not at all. I would be very interested in his answer. You see, it is very easy to deal with difficult issues that are life and death when the humanity part is in the abstract. It is very different when you have to think about people as individuals, with lives, hopes, and dreams.

GCDN: This is not about Dan Patrick, is it?

POTUS: You picked up on that, huh?

GCDN: This is about people being able to dehumanize others who aren’t their same race, ethnicity, worldview, whatever else.

POTUS: All of that is a symptom of the same mindset. When you learn to devalue someone, you can devalue everyone.

GCDN: You’re appropriating Star Trek again?

POTUS: Am I that transparent?

GCDN: The world has been following you very closely for a couple of years now. You do have themes and ideas that you repeat, even if you manage to catch us off guard with an Executive Order or two from time to time.

POTUS: Hmmm... perhaps I should shake things up a bit.

GCDN: What are you referring to?

POTUS: You’ll have to wait and see. Thank you so much for having me today.

GCDN: We’re done?

POTUS: For now, yes, thank you.

GCDN: Okay, thank you for speaking with us today. Our conversation has been quite illuminating, and thank you again for the exclusive Executive Order!

POTUS: My pleasure, as always.

The above piece is an excerpt from the speculative fiction novel 254 Days to Impeachment: The Future History of the First Independent President by J.P. Prag, available at booksellers worldwide.

Learn more about author J.P. Prag at www.jpprag.com.

254 Days to Impeachment is a work of mixed fiction and nonfiction elements. With the fiction elements, any names, characters, places, events, and incidents that bear any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental. For the nonfiction elements, no names have been changed, no characters invented, no events fabricated except for hypothetical situations.