“Without the labor and economic stability provided by slavery, the United States could not exist. Sadly, the freedom that America prides itself on and the ability for America to offer its (white and male) citizens universal suffrage and other opportunities was based on the enslavement of millions."
Each year on Juneteenth I offer my community opportunities to educate themselves on the significance of this date as part of my cultural work...this year, I offer you instead the opportunity to reflect on the ways in which symbolic gestures are weaponized by those in power to avoid meaningful repair.
Juneteenth is the observance of the supposed conclusion of our country's darkest chapter. If Enslavement is our original sin, then what do we call the ongoing exploitation, abuse, and abandonment of Black Americans? The greatest act of whitewashing American history was the attempt to apply an end date to Black suffering when, in fact, every year since 1865 has been a failure of accountability and restorative justice. Black communities continue to be plundered by American policy and Black voices continue to be silenced by our collective refusal to contend with the anti-Blackness woven like an invisible thread through every facet of our society.
Indeed, even in this current moment, as we witness our government's direct participation in a depraved act of genocide in Gaza, we are failing to recognize that our history of dehumanizing Black bodies created the permission structure for American Imperial violence on a global scale.
"In 1865, after two and a half centuries of brutal enslavement, Black Americans had great hope that emancipation would finally mean real freedom and opportunity. Most formerly enslaved people in the United States were remarkably willing to live peacefully with those who had held them in bondage despite the violence they had suffered and the degradation they had endured."
While today we "celebrate" the metaphorical end of chattel slavery in America, we must also contend with the failures of Reconstruction that ultimately resulted in the continued slow rolling genocide of Black men, women and children. Reconstruction was a century-long era of terror that firmly and permanently established a societal system of racial hierarchy. What was supposed to be a process of paying reparations for stolen labor became a violent continuation of white supremacy, lynching, rape, and anti-Black policy making. It is an era from which this nation has yet to atone for.
The 400 year genocide of the Black community in the United States and the refusal to make Black folks whole created the conditions for our government to inflict genocidal violence upon marginalized groups both here and abroad. The failures of Reconstruction are still with us. We live within a system of economic apartheid that ensures Black Americans remain deprived of collective upward mobility. The erasure of this history from current conversations around liberation and decolonization is offensive at best and reveals our fervent dedicated to upholding anti-Blackness within liberatory spaces. Even those who believe they are morally righteous because they position themselves as being dedicated to “Palestinian freedom” refuse to acknowledge their role in ensuring that Black folks in their own communities remain in a permanent state of subjugation.
While we freely and rightfully criticize the occupation of Palestine and the racist, apartheid regime, we are failing to understand that the monster is also us. Economic apartheid, medical apartheid, food apartheid - all ensure that Black Americans remain tyrannnized. We talk about dismantling capitalism but fail to center the disproportionate impact on Black communities. We talk about class solidarity without acknowledging that racism is often the barrier to the "solidarity" we claim to seek. We must contend with these truths if liberation is indeed our common goal.
There is no freedom without the complete restoration of the Black community. This requires an unwavering dedicated to naming, shaming and dismantling anti-Blackness and prioritizing a justice oriented process of healing through community care. The only appropriate way to recognize Juneteenth is through interpersonal reparations and a collective call for the redistribution of white generational wealth back to the ancestors of the victims of white violence and exploitation.
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(All quotes pulled from the Equal Justice Initiative's analysis of Reconstruction. Please visit my space on Instagram for opportunities to offer interpersonal reparations prioritizing Black mothers and queer folks.)
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