I had never heard of Juneteenth until this year. I don't feel embarrassed or guilty.
I am just reporting what I knew and didn't know.
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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.I had a general knowledge--more an assumption than knowledge--that after the surrender at Appomattox people in the South got the word that the war was over and that slavery morphed into whatever arrangements people who owned nothing--but were now free--did to survive. General Granger's announcement gives some insight. They were told to stay right where they were and keep working for the same people, but now for wages.
The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
By order of Major General Granger
In high school I took every History course taught, both required and elective. I studied American history in college at Harvard and started a Ph.D. program in American history at Yale and got a Master's Degree before dropping out with the dream of making the world a better place through politics. By coincidence, my brutally intense year-long graduate seminar course on American History at Yale was taught by David Bryon Davis, a leading authority on slavery and abolition, author of 17 books on the Civil War and slavery, including one that won the Pulitzer Prize shortly before my time studying with him.
I never heard of Juneteenth. It never came up.
I consider my ignorance anecdotal evidence about what a public school system in the western U.S. found worth teaching and what academic historians thought significant. Juneteenth was not one of them. Now--suddenly, at least to me--it is important enough to become a federal holiday. The vote to establish the holiday passed unanimously in the Senate and 415-14 in the House.
I am happy to learn of the new holiday. I cite my ignorance--and perhaps that of readers--not to suggest my disapproval of the new holiday. Rather, I consider its prior national obscurity an essential element of the holiday being possible. Most people didn't care very much, so why not?
The 14 House members who opposed it were all Republicans. A few said they objected to it's being called "Independence Day" rather than "Emancipation Day." One said that it was just stirring up bad feeling about racial conflict long past. A couple of them said the holiday was part of a greater leftist agenda to push Critical Race Theory. Still, the overwhelming majority of GOP officeholders went along.
A Juneteenth holiday is a simple gesture, like naming a courthouse or post office building. It is a harmless way for Republicans to try to show Black voters they are not anti-Black.
The holiday is a victory for Biden. He got his photo-op. Biden delivered something. It is a thank-you note to Black voters. This holiday would not have glided through if were Trump president.
The holiday is a symbolic victory for Democrats, but too little to be meaningful, and may backfire on that account. It is like bringing a bottle of very cheap wine to a dinner party. Worse, this holiday makes more remote something that might have had genuine, tangible benefit to the Democratic enterprise of making voting easier to do--making Election Day a federal holiday. Insofar as Democrats still represent the working poor, especially the harried working mothers of the country, then an Election Day holiday might enhance voter turnout. Republicans oppose it, which demonstrates that it is something worth fighting for. Democrats gave it up.
The holiday is a soft and indirect bank shot on behalf of racial justice, far enough in the past and obscure enough that few feelings are hurt. After George Floyd's murder people wanted to do something, but anything meaningful was off limits.
Juneteenth is 166 years old, and the moment involved asserting "absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property" while in fact leaving freed Blacks in peonage. But it did end legal slavery in Texas and that is good. It seems so little, but that is what Congress in 2021 can agree on.
I am happy to learn of the new holiday. I cite my ignorance--and perhaps that of readers--not to suggest my disapproval of the new holiday. Rather, I consider its prior national obscurity an essential element of the holiday being possible. Most people didn't care very much, so why not?
The 14 House members who opposed it were all Republicans. A few said they objected to it's being called "Independence Day" rather than "Emancipation Day." One said that it was just stirring up bad feeling about racial conflict long past. A couple of them said the holiday was part of a greater leftist agenda to push Critical Race Theory. Still, the overwhelming majority of GOP officeholders went along.
A Juneteenth holiday is a simple gesture, like naming a courthouse or post office building. It is a harmless way for Republicans to try to show Black voters they are not anti-Black.
The holiday is a victory for Biden. He got his photo-op. Biden delivered something. It is a thank-you note to Black voters. This holiday would not have glided through if were Trump president.
The holiday is a symbolic victory for Democrats, but too little to be meaningful, and may backfire on that account. It is like bringing a bottle of very cheap wine to a dinner party. Worse, this holiday makes more remote something that might have had genuine, tangible benefit to the Democratic enterprise of making voting easier to do--making Election Day a federal holiday. Insofar as Democrats still represent the working poor, especially the harried working mothers of the country, then an Election Day holiday might enhance voter turnout. Republicans oppose it, which demonstrates that it is something worth fighting for. Democrats gave it up.
The holiday is a soft and indirect bank shot on behalf of racial justice, far enough in the past and obscure enough that few feelings are hurt. After George Floyd's murder people wanted to do something, but anything meaningful was off limits.
Juneteenth is 166 years old, and the moment involved asserting "absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property" while in fact leaving freed Blacks in peonage. But it did end legal slavery in Texas and that is good. It seems so little, but that is what Congress in 2021 can agree on.
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11 comments:
I learned about it when the prison I worked in had a celebration of it in 1980. The African American percentage of inmates in this Alaska prison was around 33%. I guess some people have been more aware of it than certainly I was. It was a reminder that America used to allow people to own people. I wonder what percent of Republicans wish that was still the case.
The ignorance of most whites about Juneteenth is anecdotal evidence of Critical Race Theory.
I was pleased to not find my Congressmans name on the No side of the voting summary. Also surprised, as I fully expected him to oppose it, as did our neighbor to the South Doug LaMalfa. Regarding Dave's comment on Republicans, I think the percentage of those who wish to return to Pre Emancipation times is far higher than they will publically acknowledge, at least for now.
I don't think Granger's order really was that significant, certainly not at the time.
It was an administrative detail, a loose end. Hence, hardly in the history books. That its significance has grown into something more is testimony to the fact that it has not been obeyed. Yes, by the letter of the law, but in spirit, in practice...Nope.
You can be sure of one thing: Republicans voted for Juneteenth because it doesn't matter materially to them either. For them it's an empty gesture, politically and we actually should be insulted. It would have been more principled for them to fight this like they fight every other attempt to bring social justice to America.
Some have said that a new holiday is meaningless symbolism, but it does represent another step forward, however small, and that is cause for celebration.
Juneteenth does not actually mark the end of slavery in the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the Confederate states. There remained a huge battle over the 13th Amendment that actually abolished slavery in December of 1865.
There’s a lot that our history books left out, such as how dependent our economy was on slavery, especially in the South, and how brutal the institution was. That’s why CRT is an important reality-orientation for our country, regardless of all the folks who find it hard to face. Freed Blacks were not only left in peonage, but were terrorized, tortured and murdered as a form of entertainment by hostile whites for many years after the not-so-civil war.
Making Juneteenth a holiday is certainly no substitute for addressing the disparities in health, wealth, education and incarceration, but maybe it offers a glimmer of hope that we’ll at least try.
Critical Race Theory, by reminding people that our country has a sordid racist history, stirs up racial animosity - so say the 14 Forever Trumpist Republican congresspeople. Well, by that same logic, we should ban the teaching in our schools of the history of anti semitism and the Holocaust, which after all, only stir up religious division. We don’t want any white Christian children feeling any ethnic guilt or shame.
Critical race theory insists that whenever there is a racial “disparity,” the only possible reason for that disparity is racial discrimination. No other reason is permissible. The sacred assumption is that every single human ability and talent is evenly distributed among all subgroups of the population. If you utter any other thought about these matters, you will be immediately tarred as a “racist,“ and canceled.
The proponents of critical race theory implement this sacred idea in one direction only: it is only to be used when it causes an advantage for a favored minority. The underrepresentation of Asians in the NBA, for instance, will never be mentioned, and you will be canceled if you bring it up.
Critical race theory, taken to its logical conclusion, turns every field of human endeavor into a zero sum game of group versus group. If no group should be allowed to be underrepresented, then no group can be allowed to be overrepresented. Jews should never be allowed to be more than 2% of doctors or lawyers. Blacks should never be allowed to be more than 13% of hip-hop artists.
This is what they mean when they use the word “equity“ instead of “equality.“ You can see where this leads, and it’s not a pretty picture.
Michael:
In fact, CRT simply points out that racism in the U.S. is not only individual but institutional. During the Jim Crow era, that was self-evident. Now people like to delude themselves into imagining there are no lingering issues. After all, we had a Black president (so what if racists then replaced him with the biggest birther blowhard available).
Nevertheless, lingering evidence of institutional racism remains. One small example: Black Americans are incarcerated in state and federal prisons at five times the rate of White Americans. And no, it's not because they are a morally or intellectually inferior race.
“I learned about it when the prison I worked in had a celebration of it in 1980. The African American percentage of inmates in this Alaska prison was around 33%. I guess some people have been more aware of it than certainly I was. It was a reminder that America used to allow people to own people. I wonder what percent of Republicans wish that was still the case.”
This is the kind of comment that makes me not want to come to this website. This apparently is what “progressives“ think being progressive is about. There is just way too much of it.
I would also wonder, if a poll were run, how many Americans would think that this country was the only or major practitioner of slavery in history. I would speculate at least 95%.
Like Peter, I never heard of Juneteenth until the Trump controversy. And I read so much history, especially American history, and so much Civil War history, starting with all the Bruce Catton books when in junior high; Andersonville; all the way through, most recently, the biography of Douglass; Race & Reunion; Reconstruction. I have read so much over the past 60 years and never once even heard a peep about Juneteenth. I don't know what that means, in this conversation. But, in my world, it was profoundly obscure. That all said, it is a little odd to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, given how limited it was; how it left alone slavery in Union states; how anchored in the war, and not principle. So, Juneteenth is better. Nice to be educated.
There should be a moratorium on new Federal holidays. Yes, the end of slavery was incredibly important and should be celebrated. But we need to stop creating Federal holidays. There are other ways to commemorate and celebrate important events. Where is the Federal day of atonement on behalf of Native Americans? Where is the day to recognize the oppression of women, including: domestic violence; sexual harassment and assault; sex trafficking and exploitation; pay inequality; the fight for voting rights; the fight for educational and career opportunities; discrimination, harassment and assault in the military; and more.
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