Happy Juneteenth

Looking back this was something that celebrated every summer when I was a child. This event was usually a few weeks after school over for the summer there was a celebration at the park for Juneteenth. Being from Cleveland, Ohio in the 90s this was either usually Gordon Park, the beach at Lake Erie, or my Grandmother’s house. I was told by parents that this was a day where the slaves were freed and we should celebrate this because we could be still slaves today if events that had not taken place had taken place. Though I had questions beyond what my young mind could grasp I took their word and proceeded to partake in the barbequed food that I loved so much and participating in shenanigans with my cousins. Most of the time we would have left until a fight would break out across the park for any given reason or in sometimes even a shot or two would break from the crowd no word if anyone was actually killed during those times.

Nevertheless, Juneteenth was another party in the summer with family, friends, and neighbors nothing more. Until I became more self-aware with age and having more knowledge of our history I came to realize that Juneteenth is more than just a party, it was more than just that day in Galveston, Texas where the slaves there found out they were actually former slaves two years prior to them finding out. Honestly over the years the thought celebrating this day became a daunting task as there are so many effects, traumas and not to mention the systematic racism that still in effect at this moment. I purposed the question “What are we actually celebrating?” of course the answers being met with the same rhetoric that was hammered into from our teachers and children many of them non-black or that we are celebrating our ancestors who fought for us to have the rights that we have a sacrifice that should not be taken for granted.

Fast forward to the events that have been taken place starting with the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin and later Michael Brown and Sandra Bland it was made clear that “Justice For All” did not apply to people who looked like me in America. Over the years countless times, we watched video after video of murders that had gone viral on all social media platforms with no consequences of the murders the line was drawn in the sand. Tensions started to mount among those around me by arguing why the phrase Black Lives Matter exists in the first place and those who benefit from the privilege of this system that has oppressed so many pretend that they don’t understand and say All Lives Matter. This was clearly a powdered keg ready to blow at any time.

Fast-forwarding to the events of today the murder of George Floyd causing many to protest as we know in many cities those protests became violent. The effect of these actions being corporations now speaking out in support Black Lives Matter and publicly something I have never seen in my lifetime. How genuine these actions are yet to be determined but this is a step in the right direction. At least the issues we faced are being acknowledged by our workplaces even if I am forced to stop my workday to hear an office Juneteenth presentation that included the worst version of the Black National Anthem I have ever heard and to correct them in the middle of their presentation on in fact who James Baldwin was I guess we can give them a B- for effort. I realize that I’m being generous with that grade.

This year was the first year I have celebrated Juneteenth since I was a child but this time it wasn’t the same feeling I had then. The naiveté that I had so many years ago as a child was replaced with the knowledge that we living in a divided nation in the middle of a war on beliefs, though in my eyes the morality of it all should be clear living with the fact that there were forces that are going to fight with everything in them to keep things the same. Living every day with this fact is what proves to be most difficult.