Yesterday was Juneteenth, the day that commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. (I’m betting that they already knew about it, and Lee’s surrender a few months earlier, but that was the first day that enough U.S. troops were around to enforce it.) Slaves in Salem, N.C., a stone’s throw from my front yard, had the same experience only about a month earlier.
Today I went to our local Juneteenth celebration. It was such a joyful gathering of community, with lots of young people performing, and a local African drum band and dancers that I could’ve listened to all day.
Juneteenth means a lot of different things for me. It’s a time to look at where we’ve been, and where we’re going. In my city, we’re still dealing with the legacy of decades of racism in public policy (which I wrote about on Feministing – yes, that’s me on the main page, WOO-HOO!). Whenever I hear someone – usually white, usually politically conservative – complain that African Americans should just quit their bitching and pull themselves up by their boot-straps, I want to scream.
And then I want to point to the oldest African American neighborhood in the state, where freed slaves settled after the war, and where the city built a public housing project in the 60’s. I want to point to another historically black neighborhood just west of downtown, through which the state built an interstate. Why that neighborhood, and not the white neighborhood a few blocks away?, I want to ask. Can we pause for half a second to think critically about these choices? How did that decision to cut a neighborhood in half help turn the place into a slum, reducing the property values enough to make it the perfect spot for a baseball stadium? Can we acknowledge that none of us live in a vacuum, not even the rich folks on the west side with their zoning laws?
At least I live in a city where the minority population is relatively mobilized. What must it be like to live in a place where you don’t have even the smallest bit of clout?
It’s troubling to me that I was one of the only white people at the party today. It boggles my mind that, in 2009, we still have separate places for blacks and whites and Latinos. Yes, I’m sensitive to the needs of any community to celebrate its identity in a safe place, and I don’t want to make it about me. I don’t have the first clue what it’s like to experience Juneteenth as a person of color, because I’m not a person of color. But it’s an event that resonates with me because I believe so strongly that slavery and racism and oppression hurt all of us, and that the end of those things is something that all of us should pray for. How is Juneteenth different from Memorial Day, or July 4th?
I had so much fun today, talking with people and learning so much about a side of my community that I don’t get to see very often. (Except for the one crazy old white lady that apparently wondered in on the wrong bus… That’s a whole ‘nother story.) I wish that I hadn’t been one of the only white people there. Not because I felt awkward – never did, except for when I tried to thread my car between a PT Cruiser and a giant gully – but because it’s healthy to be pushed out of your comfort zone, to get a glimpse of how people “different” from you interact when you’re not around. Because that’s how you learn that the people who are different from you aren’t really as different as you might think.
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