Stop Exploiting Our Holiday — Juneteenth Must Be About True Action on Reparations
On June 19th, 2021 the United States, as a nation, celebrated and acknowledged the emancipation of enslaved peoples alongside us for the first time in its history.
Nationwide, Black families and communities came together to celebrate and remember Juneteenth — just as we have, every year, since 1865.
For many of us, Juneteenth is a day to center Black joy, commemorate Black history, and enjoy good food on a summer day.
For much of this time, our celebrations have been siloed from our work, our colleagues, our neighbors, and from the rest of the world.
Last year, that changed.
2020 kicked off the next era of Black political power and liberation. Black people fought, as a collective, to bring the demands of our community to the forefront. The Movement challenged civil and governmental systems, from education, to policing and the carceral system, to professional sports, to acknowledge and eradicate anti-Black practices from the foundations of their respective institutions.
Federal recognition of Juneteenth was one of the many demands and initiatives we brought forward, both to uplift Black culture and Black power. As an observance that both forces us to acknowledge the wrongs of this country’s past while also celebrating our progress towards liberation, Juneteenth is, and deserves to be recognized.
Today, we are thrilled to observe the one-year anniversary of Juneteenth becoming an official federal holiday!
But it is clear that our work is far from over. Juneteenth represents our freedom, our liberation, our past, and our future. But we continue to grapple with the tension between celebrating freedom and justice and the continued struggle to permanently secure both.
We stay the course, protecting and cultivating more and more momentum towards liberation and joy for our people.
Even as we rejoice in our successes, we recognize that the sanctioning of our holiday rings hollow if our culture is further exploited by the relentless machine of late-stage capitalism.
Eight hours of “paid time off” means nothing if Black people are not liberated economically — or have structures and systems that ensure quality education, equitable public resources, or the basic human right of physical safety. We deserve to live, thrive, and realize our full potential — and pawning the commemoration of our emancipation for political capital or profits has no part in that fullness.
This year, on the first anniversary of Juneteenth’s designation as a federal holiday, it is imperative that our economy, government, and society demonstrate a true commitment to Black emancipation. We want, deserve, and are owed reparations.
Reparations, or “the act or process of making amends for a wrong,” contain five key conditions to meet the criteria laid out by the United Nations:
- Cessation, assurances, and guarantees of non-repetition;
- Restitution and repatriation;
- Compensation;
- Satisfaction; and
- Rehabilitation.
In this pivotal historic moment, wherein Juneteenth’s memorialization intends to inspire change, we are — even at this writing — already seeing the exploitation and commercialization of our historic celebration of Black freedom by corporate America. We urge business leaders nationwide to, instead, wield your immeasurable influence for transformative good.
In 2010, the United States Supreme Court incorrectly gave corporations many of the same protections and rights that human beings are afforded under our nation’s laws. After this case, independent political expenditures of corporations became protected under the first amendment, freedom of speech being the most politically significant.
This legislative context and abundance of liquid assets make corporate America uniquely positioned to influence rapid reparative justice–-and we believe that corporations can and must pave the way for reparations in this country.
Today, we call upon the same companies who rapidly rallied behind the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020: Step into the fullness of your financial positioning and power. Act on your claims to value Black life via holistic reparations for Black communities and push for reparations. Doing so will ensure that your words are not more hollow, reactionary pledges exploiting Black death and culture.
While we are not opposed to Juneteenth recognition, we ARE opposed to corporate America using Black pain, Black joy, Black victories, and Black history as an opportunity to expand their pockets without investing back into OUR communities. Stop exploiting our holiday.
We demand that American corporations reckon with how they may have profited from slavery and take concrete steps that go beyond mere feel-good public relations efforts. American companies should announce their public support for reparations immediately. We know that many corporations have benefited from the legacy and continued oppression of Black people, and therefore they must do their part in making true reparations. We demand reparations for African descended people in the United States and beyond. While we prioritize the demand for reparations for slavery, we do not limit our demand for reparations to slavery. We believe demanding reparations only for slavery erases the reality that the United States has continued to exploit and harm Black people through convict leasing, sharecropping, Jim Crow, redlining, and other policies of structural discrimination and exclusion, and mass criminalization and incarceration through policies such as the “war on drugs.”
We demand that those who purport to join hands with us in celebration and lift up our culture align their word with real deeds.
Reparations NOW.
And a Juneteenth to remember for you, and yours — this year, and every year.
