Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day, one of the most important days in the history of the United States of America. If you wonder what Juneteenth is about, it’s a day on June 19, 1865, when freedom began for the Black community as the United States of America ended slavery. Even though President Abraham Lincoln ordered the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 to end the slavery of African-Americans, not everyone agreed with that or did not get the order until later due to slow delivery and on that day June 19th, 1865, the United States Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in the state of Texas at the end of American civil war. On June 19, 1865, the black community was freed in every state. Even though slavery ended, there were some people, including some politicians, who tried to find every way to restrict their freedoms, such as Jim Crow laws, which segregated colored people from having the same access to things that white people had. Such as segregation in education, public services, businesses, restaurants, and others. Although it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it had initially passed through the United States House and the United States Senate with bipartisan support.
Even with the Emancipation Proclamation ordered by President Abraham Lincoln to end the slavery in the United States, and the Civil Rights Act 1964 became a law in the United States of America, unfortunately, there are some people including the government in some states or cities continue to try to find a way or a loophole to suppress the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) community’s freedom and restricting their rights as Americans.
Disclaimer: I am a white person, a white male, and my ancestors are Irish and English.
We, as white people, I am white, and my ancestors were white, built a societal system full of racism. It was wrong of us to do that because even any one of us that are an ally or wants to be an ally, there is a very long way for us to undo what we did because our ancestors, along with ourselves, decided to be racists. No, don’t go around and say that you aren’t racist because you are, and I am too, because our ancestors built the system that taught us to be one, even if our current generation or the future generations disagree or disavow that. Even with our current generation and the generations before us, we may remain unaware of the fact that everyone isn’t equal. Still, the problem is it is far from being true, and that was why the BIPOC community made the Black Lives Matter Movement that shook the earth, because some of us white people were too ignorant to realize that even to this day, we are still being unfair to them. Look at how the law enforcement treats them, they want to make sure that they are reminded that we white people are still the superior, which is unacceptable. It’s something that we as white people will never understand, but what we can do is to listen to them and do the right thing. They are suffering every day from the systemic racism that our white ancestors built, which is ironclad and may never be dismantled, but what is important is how we can do right by them in our current and future generations. No, we as white people can try to apologize for what our ancestors did, but our apology to them is not enough and never will be enough because it is just a word that doesn’t make any impact. If we, as white people, want to apologize, then we should be sure to back it up with our actions, which is more important than the word itself.
Speaking of how we white people continue to suppress the BIPOC community. The criminal justice system, the law enforcement, incarcerates BIPOC people at a rate five times that of white people. BIPOC people are three times more likely to be killed by police compared to white people. Radical profiling where BIPOC people are unfairly targeted and face harsher sentencing than white people. In housing and economic opportunities, real estate agents, appraisers, and others may undervalue homes owned by BIPOC individuals, which means that when they sell or rent their homes, they will receive low offers or be taken advantage of. Not only are their homes undervalued, but the neighborhood, which has a majority BIPOC population, is also undervalued, which scares away businesses from wanting to open a store, restaurant, or physical business in that neighborhood. Not just that neighborhood, but also any city that has a majority BIPOC population or close to it. The politicians, especially Republicans, always suppress the BIPOC voters with gerrymandering, where they will draw around them to make sure that their votes do not have any influence in electing a politician that they want to represent them, and also making sure that they do not influence the policy decisions. For instance, map gerrymandering isn’t a simple circle or a square; it appears to have been drawn by a child, intentionally designed to ensure that their votes do not count and that only the votes within that gerrymandering map, which is predominantly composed of the white population, do count. There was a solution to that where it’s to make sure that everyone’s votes not to be suppressed which is a law titled “John Lewis Voting Rights Act” but it wouldn’t be able to passed because some Republican politicians want to make sure that the BIPOC voters doesn’t get counted thanks to gerrymandering map designed mainly by some Republicans. To ensure that every voter gets counted and has their voice heard, it is necessary to eliminate gerrymandering. The Voting Rights Act was proposed every year, and that shouldn’t happen because it should have become law when it was first brought to the floor for a vote. As for education, BIPOC students will be more likely to face harsher disciplinary actions than white students for the same infractions. When there is a school in the BIPOC population’s area, they often get less funding every year than the schools in the white population’s area, which results in not enough resources and opportunities. There are many more examples of how BIPOC people continue to be oppressed, and if you want to know more of them, then do some research on it through a search engine, which is what I did so that I could share a few examples with you here.
Although I am a white person, there are some things that we can look up online about slavery, the oppression, and suppression of BIPOC people. Please ask anyone in the BIPOC community because they are the ones who have been suffering from it for decades. It would be better to hear them straight from the sources, which is the BIPOC community. Ask them, and listen to what they have to say! They may be painful for us to hear about what they have gone through and what they are still going through to this day, but they are through the actions of us white people and our ancestors. Even though the Black Lives Matter movement happened a few years ago, it does not mean that they are done telling us the stories of their ancestors and the sufferings that we have inflicted on them. As those of you who made Black Lives Matter as a group of BIPOC people or something else, stop that because the Black Lives Matter were the name of a movement against the police brutality in the first place but we white people distorted the message from the movement so much that confuses some people when the bottom line is it’s a movement against the police brutality due to the mistreatments that they have gotten from the police for decades. Also, it was disrespectful of us to push Black Lives Matter out and make it All Lives Matter. To them, that is wishful thinking, but we white people aren’t being suppressed, beaten up, or killed by the police, so stop making it all about us when we are already privileged. I am ashamed of my white people that we minimized the message behind the Black Lives Matter movement by putting the All Lives Matter over it when we never were enslaved, suppressed, oppressed, mistreated, and more. This is their time, the BIPOC people, and for us it’s time to listen to their stories about how awful our white ancestors did to their ancestors. By doing so, we are unpacking ourselves and hopefully learning how to be an ally through actions, as words alone do not have any impact.
So, on this day, June 19th every year, we should take that as an opportunity to educate ourselves and learn what our white ancestors have done. This is their day; we can celebrate with them, but let’s be sure to remind ourselves that this is their special day, and it’s their Happy Juneteenth Day! How can we educate ourselves, learn about their history, their stories, and whatnot? There are plenty of ways to do that, but the most important one is to listen to them. After that, we can read some books, do some research online, communicate with them, and more, so hopefully our future generations can do better than what our white ancestors did to them!
By doing a search engine on a few things that are being recommended for us, white people to learn from.
To Read
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander.
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein.
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington.
- A Black Women’s History of the United States, by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross.
- America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s, by Elizabeth Hinton.
- The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Jake Silverstein, Ilena Silverman, and Caitlin Roper.
- Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America, by Michael Harriot.
To Watch
- Hidden Figures, starring Taraji Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Kevin Costner.
- Black Wall Street Burning, starring Dekoven Riggins and Marcus Brown.
- Selma, starring David Oyelowo and Tom Wilkinson.
- Just Mercy, starring Michael Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson.
- Till, starring Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison.
- 12 Years a Slave, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Michael Fassbender.
- Hulu’s The 1619 Project, produced by Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times Magazine.
- Hulu’s Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre.
- Hulu’s Underground, starring Urmee Smollett-Bell, Aldis Hodge, Jessica De Gouw, Alano Miller, Christopher Meloni, and Amirah Vann.
- Netflix’s 13th.
Read Online
- Emancipation Proclamation on Wikipedia.
- Slavery in the United States on Wikipedia.
- End of slavery in the United States on Wikipedia.
- Juneteenth on Wikipedia.
- Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on Wikipedia.
- American Civil War on Wikipedia.
- Civil Rights Movement on Wikipedia.
Most of these I listed above were recommended by the search engines, some of them that I, myself, recommended, and if there are more resources that I haven’t listed please let me know by leaving a comment especially if you are part of the BIPOC community below so that way the other people can know about them. There is so much to learn, to listen to, to read, and to watch! Even with the lists I have shared above, there are more available through search engines like Google or Bing, which I suggest you look up, as there are many more than I can share. The reason I am writing this article is that I not only recognize Juneteenth and its importance, but also acknowledge the significance of the event. I also hope that future generations will come across this article to read about what we white people did and continue to do to the BIPOC community. That they will do better than the past generations, our white ancestors. Don’t use the words; show the actions, and that’s just a start. What is most important is that we listen to them, because they have been trying to tell us and educate us for centuries. However, our ancestors chose to ignore them, and hopefully, our future generations will not do the same. With that said, in celebration of Juneteenth, this is their day, and for us to learn every day how to do the right things that our ancestors failed to do. July 4th is Independence Day for the United States of America, which has nothing to do with freedom. July 4th was the day that America declared independence from Britain, and that is it. It is cringeworthy that many of us white people celebrate July 4th while wearing clothes with the “freedom” word on them or the “freedom” on some materials, because on that day, there was no freedom. When the United States was declared independent, there was no freedom because the BIPOC people weren’t freed like we white people/ancestors were. However, on that day, Juneteenth in 1865 marked a true day of independence and freedom, as it was the start of the emancipation that allowed everyone to be free – a country that not only belongs to us white people, as we robbed the land from indigenous people, but since that day the country were for every one of us. The democracy in the United States of America was born.
Recognize them, recognize their pains, their sufferings, and the hardships that they went through caused by us, white people. Accept it, we did that, and now, how can we ensure that we don’t repeat what our ancestors did? Listen, ask them, hear them out, see them, learn them, and support them.
Joshie of JoshiesWorld wishes them a Happy Juneteenth Day!
Joshua “Joshie” Sullivan.
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