JUNETEENTH
America’s never-ending thing with race
I woke up this morning and while I was transitioning from being asleep to being fully awake, I did what I usually do. I grabbed my phone and checked my messages. One was from a person I am close to: “Is it appropriate to wish you a Happy Juneteenth?”
I have no idea why it might not be appropriate to wish me a happy Juneteenth. But right there is a darned good example of how confused and fractured we Americans are about race in America. It’s almost taboo to even talk about it. “Is it appropriate to wish you a happy Juneteenth?”
I can think of no reason why it would be inappropriate. It’s a day America has set aside as a national day of celebration of a significant event in American history involving Black Americans. It’s an American holiday. It’s not a Black holiday any more than The Fourth of July is a White holiday...except...except that the freedom from British tyranny that Independence Day celebrates and honors did not apply to Frederick Douglass or any Black American - as Frederick Douglass so eloquently clarified when he was invited as keynote speaker to address the Rochester NY Ladies Anti-Slavery Society at their 1852 Fourth of July celebration in Rochester NY:
“I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
The glorious freedom that the good ladies of Rochester were so giddily celebrating did not apply to Black people in America. Douglass escaped his enslavement in 1838 when he ran from his enslaver in Baltimore and fled to NY - a state that was heavily enslaved until the practice was abolished in 1827. Northern, non-Confederate states to this day like to brag that they always embraced freedom and opposed slavery. But that was never true and was especially not true in New York where slavery was practiced more heavily than any other northern state. In 1790 about 6% of the states’ population was enslaved making it the largest enslaved population of any northern state. In New York City that number jumped from 6% to about 40%. So hey, NY…you can stop feeling all smug and righteous.
Technically, Douglas was free when he got to New York. But the law permitted slave hunters to capture him and return him to his rightful owner. Douglass wasn’t actually free until a British couple purchased his freedom in 1846.
There has been much confusion about what the date June 19th represents. AI says that “Juneteenth represents the delayed enforcement of emancipation in Texas, and the end of slavery as a system for any enslaved Texans.” Great! But what in the hell does that mean? Slavery happened all across the south not just Texas. And as I pointed out above, slavery actually happened in every corner of the colonies.
If I have been asked, which I wasn’t, June 19 is not the day. It was not the day that enslavement ended. I would also not have selected the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln signed as an executive order on January 1, 1863 to go into effect that same day. I would not have chosen January 1 to represent slave freedom because the Emancipation Proclamation, as celebrated as it is, did not achieve freedom for a single slave.
At that time, Lincoln was not considered by the Confederacy to be the president of their country, the Confederate States of America. The President of the CSA was Jefferson Davis and he had not freed any slaves. He was fighting to keep 4 million humans enslaved, not un-enslaved.
And of course, not all slave holding states seceded from the union. Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri... all slaveholding states, elected to stay with the union. Lincoln, not wanting to antagonize those states and encourage them to join the Confederacy, excluded extending freedom to slaves held in those states.
So the Confederate states ignored him and the northern slave holding states were excluded. Thus the emancipation proclamation freed not one single human being.
And I also would not have chosen the end of the Civil War. That ended hostilities and effectively ended slavery. But technically, American slavery was still a legal thing until the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 18th, 1865 - almost three years after the Emancipation Proclamation and 8 months after the war to preserve slavery had ended.
The 13th amendment ended enslavement. Or did it? “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
No involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime. Today, Black Americans - who represent about 13% of the American population - represent somewhere between 32% to 38% - just shy of 2,000,000 people - behind bars. For them, involuntary servitude is still a brutal reality.
So if I had been asked what date to pick to celebrate either the end of involuntary servitude...I would have said, “I don’t know, but hopefully sometime in the future.” So I don’t know why my friend wondered if it would be inappropriate to wish me a joyful Juneteenth. Maybe she knows more history then I realized, or maybe she just knows me better than I knew.
Or maybe not. Because this morning, as always if you’re paying attention, the news is full of the challenges of being free and Black and American with equal access to the American dream.
There’s never a day that the news doesn’t include America’s Thing With Race. Today’s Daily Thing involves the flagrant racism of a high, powerful government official – Pete Hegseth – Secretary of Defense. The NYT lede was, “Secret vetting and blocked promotions. Inside Hegseth’s War On Diversity. A Black Admiral fixed one of the Navy’s worst messes. Hegseth blocked his promotion anyway.”
I’m tempted to copy and paste it here. But it has been pointed out to me that my newsletters can be long. TOO long. So if you’d like to read the story, here you go.
The story contained no surprises. So I wasn’t shocked back to sleep or anything like that. But it reminded me of the intense and ultimately successful campaign to kill both Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Bill.
I thought about the metrics of which Black Americans are on the bottom of every one. Every single one. Median household income, poverty, unemployment, work-force, participation, employment to population ratio, life expectancy at birth, homeownership, median household, net worth, some post secondary education, adults in fair/poor health, uninsured adults, maternal mortality, infant mortality, and incarceration.
It has been said that Black Americans do not need a hand out, but due to years and years of roadblocks and obstacles, a hand up would be fair. Yet so many Americans are opposed. I thought about how the fans of resentment are being fanned by our elected representatives at every level of the government.
15% of American adults, said White people face at least “quite a bit of discrimination”. 18% of White Americans said White people face “a great deal” I’m just discrimination. 55% of White Americans said there is discrimination against White people in America today.
28% of White Americans said that Black people face a lot of discrimination, 45% of White Americans said that White people face a lot of discrimination.
So what day or event would I have chosen to celebrate Black success and Black freedom? Maybe someday in the future. But not this day. I’m not ready yet. And neither, apparently, is my country.
Sources:
https://apnorc.org/projects/the-public-is-skeptical-about-the-effectiveness-of-dei-initiatives/
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/09/median-household-income.html
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/09/household-income-race-hispanic.html
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html
Even though there are laws and proclamations to abolish racial discrimination, if it still lives in the hearts and minds of some people, it keeps resurfacing. Like mold in a house. You keep trying to clean it off, but there's always a few stubborn spores that hide out and resurface and multiply when the climate permits.
Thank you, Wayne. Well said.