What is Juneteenth When Black Lives Don’t Matter?

Let’s be honest. Before this year, you’d probably never heard of Juneteenth. 

In the wake of the brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks, much of America has mobilized, rallied, and marched in a way that’s much more passionate and sustained than anything I’ve ever witnessed. 

Citizens from across the world have organized demonstrations paying tribute to Mr. Floyd, as U.S. protesters are demanding local governments end militarized policing and defund police, to the extent their duties are better suited for other government employees like social workers or substance abuse counselors.

As this interest in the Black experience continues to grow, we’ve seen a significant increased interest in Black history (not just Black popular culture). This year, Juneteenth—the day that marks the actual end of slavery—is garnering more attention than ever.

I must pause and make something abundantly clear: Juneteenth is not a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, the document you were taught freed the slaves. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day news of the Civil War’s end made it to Texas, marking the end of slavery in Texas and other Confederate states—two years after Lincoln’s 1863 Proclamation.

If you are white, the reason you’ve likely never heard of Juneteenth, frankly, is because it’s not a holiday for you. It’s for Black people. It’s for us. We hold this holiday close to our hearts because it’s one of the few that represents actual progress—not for “the country,” but for us.

Black Americans are constantly forced to evaluate traditional American holidays through the lens of our own servitude, abuse, and continued subjugation. Indeed, many of Americans’ favorite holidays, when viewed through a realistic historic lens, are painful reminders of the country’s violent history. 

As Frederick Douglass asked, what good is commemorating our independence from Britain on the 4th of July, when rich, white, landowning men were the only Americans permitted to enjoy the freedoms such independence promised?

What is Thanksgiving to those who were raped, pillaged, and kidnapped as the so-called Pilgrims colonized land with no regard for its native inhabitants and eventually utilized the free labor of enslaved Africans? 

What is Memorial Day, when so many of the Black members of our military returned home from fighting wars for our country, only to be treated as second-class citizens?

We celebrate Juneteenth to honor one of the few historical moments where something positive for Black people actually occurred. But even with our own holiday, a day that’s only for us, I’m pained by the nagging question:

What is Juneteenth in a country where Black Lives don’t matter?

How can we celebrate Black people’s liberation when our system of policing literally originated as runaway slave patrols?

How can Black people rejoice in our freedom, when the system designed to enforce our laws was also explicitly designed to maintain our status as second-class citizens, following the Jim Crow era? 

How can we possibly celebrate our ancestors’ release from bondage when the so-called keepers of the peace are still emboldened enough to chain us and kneel on our necks?

How can we toast our shift in status from property to full human beings when many Americans are more upset about destruction of property than about the abuse of Black Bodies?

What is Juneteenth in a police state where protests against police brutality are met with more police brutality and gassed and assaulted by our military?

I can’t tell anyone what Juneteenth should mean to them, but I now know what it means for me:

It can’t symbolize our release from bondage, because we’re still bound by a different caste system of mass incarceration and militarized policing. It can’t mark the day of our freedom, because we’re still in the process of getting free. 

This year, Juneteenth doesn’t serve as a historic look to our past, but as our North Star guiding us forward, toward the true realization of America’s creed.

The timing of this movement in relation to Juneteenth cannot be ignored. Our country appears poised on the brink of enacting change never before seen. 

May this Juneteenth serve as a reminder that half measures—partial emancipations—betray our country’s most sacred promise of true equality.

I hope it further emboldens us to wrestle away the arc of the moral universe from those who seek to keep us in bondage—and bend it toward justice, ourselves. 

One day, Juneteenth will represent the complete and total liberation of Black people. And while that day is not today, it is more attainable now than ever.