Juneteenth, 2023
Like the rest of this year, this Juneteenth has ignited deep reflection
This year’s Juneteenth was kind of nonexistent for me. I wanted to host a little cookout but, alas, I had to push it back from its original Saturday, a friend couldn’t make it, and we got rained out regardless. I tried to get into Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth, and read the preface by Charles Johnson (which was quite compelling.
Reading about how Ellison obsessed over his novel for so many years was something that resonated with me too much), but I didn’t pick it back up as my mind was craving something more unserious. So I got more into my TV this week, cackling at Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s performance in The Idol (episode four was very good, though) and mentally fixing the writing for Black Mirror season 6.
As someone who loves holidays and commemoration, I was a little annoyed at my own lack of urgency around celebrating my independence day. But at the same time, I was led to some deep reflection and, really, the holiday wasn’t wasted on me at all. In fact, Juneteenth 2023 served as a mass reminder of the broken systems we live amongst not only in this country but in the world. In the heightened visibility of the lives and experiences of marginalized groups, you really don’t need that much of a reminder of our incredibly flawed social structures.
But, conservative discourse is very loud right now. So much so that there are more people beginning to believe that we have officially broken the shackles of our oppression and are just reaching for something to be upset about because something something ‘victim mentality,’ something something ‘Black community accountability.’ It’s very loud and unintelligible.
Really, the discourse is telling me that more people need to read Christina Sharpe.
The day of Juneteenth, I read and retweeted a post from Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush that jolted my thinking out of sleep mode. It reads:
“It’s Juneteenth AND reparations.
It’s Juneteenth AND end police violence + the War on Drugs.
It’s Juneteenth AND end housing + education apartheid.
It’s Juneteenth AND teach the truth about white supremacy in our country.
Black liberation must be prioritized.”
Black liberation must be prioritized.
The day before, the Titan submersible went missing in the North Atlantic on an expedition to view the Titanic ship's wreckage. Inside were four extremely wealthy men, and a nineteen-year-old child, the son of one of the men who was only there to please his father. For days, the search and rescue captivated the nation in numerous ways. Everything from deep sadness to stark outrage and, resultingly, clowning to process the outrage.
Truly, Black Twitter’s handling of the urgency and attention the situation was getting is a whole other unpacking in and of itself that deserves ample room to breathe, as our discourse was spotlighting some serious truths that a lot of other folks don’t want to acknowledge about colonized societies. But it was so because within the same news cycle, a fishing ship carrying up to 700 migrants from across the Middle East sank near Greece, and the search and rescue efforts, as well as the media coverage, failed to treat this tragedy with the same level of gravity as it did the Titan submersible.
Oh yeah, and there’s a chance that Affirmative Action may be overturned by the Supreme Court sometime this week. Thanks to lawsuits brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina by Students for Fair Admissions, where they allege both universities discriminate against Asian applicants and give preferential treatment to Black applicants, Affirmative Action is being reevaluated as to whether or not it is truly discriminatory.
Once again, more people seriously need to read Christina Sharpe, because Affirmative Action isn’t discriminatory; it’s an infrastructural band aide to the discrimination marginalized applicants have faced when applying to colleges. A major reason why HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) even exist is that schools like Harvard and UNC were not admitting Black applicants. In fact, in many states, they were barred from attending these schools from their inceptions, and the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow in this country have made it to where it was still incredibly difficult to attend a PWI (Predominantly White Institution) as a Black student.
Affirmative Action is to help safeguard marginalized applicants from discrimination in the admissions process, because the ghosts of the past are, in actuality, generational curses (read more about Affirmative Action and other bits of terminology in this section in the ‘For Further Learning’ reading list at the end).
At this point in the thinking about this post, about the world, Congresswoman Bush’s words are ever prominent:
“Black liberation must be prioritized.”
I mentioned to a friend the other day how things have been feeling very lowkey this year. Black History Month felt lowkey. Women’s History Month felt lowkey. Pride month has felt lowkey. It’s a feeling of tip-toeing around eggshells, as the rise in conservatism as I’ve previously mentioned is gaining more and more of a chokehold on the collective consciousness.
I fear we are entering an era of Reagan-esque proportions, but more in-your-face and destructive. It has rebuilt the pipeline to fascism, and I do believe it has arrived. Modern life is hard, challenging your worldview is hard, and change is hard. But the answer to our current and continuous societal ills is definitely not to go back to a time of absolute state-sanctioned segregation, to suppress one’s way of being, to limit their possibilities, to predetermine where they go, to assert they are inferior because something something ‘bastardization of Christianity says so,’ something something ‘Black skin = bad, white skin = good’ or some nonsense like that.
I know spiritualism isn’t for everybody (and please don’t think I’m wacky) but hear me out. The numerology of our year, 2023, signals introspection. It is a time of great undoing, and we individually need to choose if we are going to take a step forward or a step backward. Taking a step forward would be for our own benefit and for the future of society, but backward is a different story and one that’s unfolding.
Though much of my jadedness comes from going through the motions as a twenty-something in the modern world, it’s exacerbated by the anti-progress we have seen in such a short amount of time. So I’ve been thinking about the future, the past, and the now in new lights so I can stay vigilant. I hate that I have to be vigilant.
But it’s how I prioritize our liberation.
For Further Learning:
“The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth” — National Museum of African American History and Culture
“Affirmative Action” — Colorado College
