If Juneteenth has been celebrated by black Americans all along, one wonders why it was instated as a federal holiday, especially in 2020, during the communist efforts otherwise known as "racial reckoning."
Cut to 2001 or so at an artists' colony during Christmas, a woman says in that sort of morally superior incredulity, You've never heard of Kwanza?
She was older than I am, but no, I came of age in a more unified United States in the 60s and 70s, when black culture was pretty much its own thing apart from the music. But blacks were also part of the collective.
Anyway, we all love a collective day off. Who celebrates Labor Day as intended? Veterans Day? We are increasingly separated into groups and THERE lies MY grievance. It began in earnest in the 90s and there is only one telos for this, I'm afraid. To create separate warring factions.
I've been privy to the black activist class claiming that black Americans can't relate to the 4th of July. Therein lies the issue. That is a collective holiday. We should all be nationalists in this regard. (I've heard that the NYC mayor has canceled 4th of July celebrations/parades? I'm not sure, one never knows these days).
Anyway, any move on behalf of black activists to separate blacks from the rest of Americans with separate holidays and so on is merely perpetuating their so-called "marginalization" problem.
And I have noticed that this strident illogic courses through black narratives across the board.
Thanks for your essay. I find it interesting that you related these recently-manufactured holidays to the "non-binary" phonemonon without really discussing much about the common underlying thread, which is the Democratic Party. To truly understand all these things, we must grasp the political motivations of the people behind them. In its quest for power, the Democrat Party decades ago adopted a coalition strategy to stitch together non-White voters in order to overcome the Republican-leaning White majority, still the only well-defined majority bloc in the USA. But it's not enough: to win consistently, Democrats must fragment the White bloc. To do this, they use Marxist ideology to attract mostly-White fringe groups. More than that, they use their diabolical propagandists at every level of academia to convince vulnerable students that they are members of those groups; hence (for example) we now have 5% of all youth in the USA reporting themselves as "non-binary", a concept so formerly odd that essentially nobody had heard of it just a couple decades ago. To gain power, the Democrats will engage in literally anything to destroy our rational social fabric; one need only look at the constantly insane behaviors of their voters (say, in Minne-hopeless) to understand this. I describe the Democrats' deconstruction process fully in an article. It's long, but if you really want to understand how the Democrats are systematically destroying us, it'll be worth your time: READ: "There's nothing crazy about the Democrats' agenda"
Kwanza is correctly described in your article as a holiday manufactured by activists. But with Juneteenth you are quite mistaken.
Like you, I am an older white male and had no idea about this event or the celebration. I’m an environmental lawyer and about 30 years ago I represented a citizens group of mostly older African American homeowners in South Central LA (Actually Athens Park south of Watts) over a proposed expansion of a hazardous waste transfer station in their neighborhood. Many of these older homeowners came from Texas and Louisiana and they told me about this holiday which had been celebrated for generations. Indeed, it has been celebrated in the South among African Americans for 170 years.
You and I don’t know about it because it’s part of American culture that was invisible to us but always present.
I generally agree with much of what you say but you got Juneteenth all wrong. These Black senior citizen homeowners in Athens Park 30 years ago cherished Juneteenth as did their forefathers and they were about as woke as your own parents. Very socially conservative churchgoing people.
It’s an understandable mistake James. Not your culture neither mine. But it is a strand of American culture and not activist bullshit as you claim.
> One is the official account: Juneteenth commemorates the date on 1984 that the Union army announced that slaves in Galveston, TX were to be immediately freed.
1865? "1984" doesn't make any sense here.
At any rate, if one were going to celebrate such a holiday, it should be on December 18th, which is when the 13th Amendment went into effect, and the last slaves in Delaware were actually freed. Of course, I wouldn't expect Joe Biden, who is *from* Delaware, to want to call attention to the fact that the last black slaves weren't freed for another six months in his home state. And certainly to not want to call attention to the fact that Delaware didn't itself ratify the 13th Amendment until 1901.
If Juneteenth has been celebrated by black Americans all along, one wonders why it was instated as a federal holiday, especially in 2020, during the communist efforts otherwise known as "racial reckoning."
Cut to 2001 or so at an artists' colony during Christmas, a woman says in that sort of morally superior incredulity, You've never heard of Kwanza?
She was older than I am, but no, I came of age in a more unified United States in the 60s and 70s, when black culture was pretty much its own thing apart from the music. But blacks were also part of the collective.
Anyway, we all love a collective day off. Who celebrates Labor Day as intended? Veterans Day? We are increasingly separated into groups and THERE lies MY grievance. It began in earnest in the 90s and there is only one telos for this, I'm afraid. To create separate warring factions.
I've been privy to the black activist class claiming that black Americans can't relate to the 4th of July. Therein lies the issue. That is a collective holiday. We should all be nationalists in this regard. (I've heard that the NYC mayor has canceled 4th of July celebrations/parades? I'm not sure, one never knows these days).
Anyway, any move on behalf of black activists to separate blacks from the rest of Americans with separate holidays and so on is merely perpetuating their so-called "marginalization" problem.
And I have noticed that this strident illogic courses through black narratives across the board.
Thanks for your essay. I find it interesting that you related these recently-manufactured holidays to the "non-binary" phonemonon without really discussing much about the common underlying thread, which is the Democratic Party. To truly understand all these things, we must grasp the political motivations of the people behind them. In its quest for power, the Democrat Party decades ago adopted a coalition strategy to stitch together non-White voters in order to overcome the Republican-leaning White majority, still the only well-defined majority bloc in the USA. But it's not enough: to win consistently, Democrats must fragment the White bloc. To do this, they use Marxist ideology to attract mostly-White fringe groups. More than that, they use their diabolical propagandists at every level of academia to convince vulnerable students that they are members of those groups; hence (for example) we now have 5% of all youth in the USA reporting themselves as "non-binary", a concept so formerly odd that essentially nobody had heard of it just a couple decades ago. To gain power, the Democrats will engage in literally anything to destroy our rational social fabric; one need only look at the constantly insane behaviors of their voters (say, in Minne-hopeless) to understand this. I describe the Democrats' deconstruction process fully in an article. It's long, but if you really want to understand how the Democrats are systematically destroying us, it'll be worth your time: READ: "There's nothing crazy about the Democrats' agenda"
https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/theres-nothing-crazy-about-the-democrats
Kwanza is correctly described in your article as a holiday manufactured by activists. But with Juneteenth you are quite mistaken.
Like you, I am an older white male and had no idea about this event or the celebration. I’m an environmental lawyer and about 30 years ago I represented a citizens group of mostly older African American homeowners in South Central LA (Actually Athens Park south of Watts) over a proposed expansion of a hazardous waste transfer station in their neighborhood. Many of these older homeowners came from Texas and Louisiana and they told me about this holiday which had been celebrated for generations. Indeed, it has been celebrated in the South among African Americans for 170 years.
You and I don’t know about it because it’s part of American culture that was invisible to us but always present.
I generally agree with much of what you say but you got Juneteenth all wrong. These Black senior citizen homeowners in Athens Park 30 years ago cherished Juneteenth as did their forefathers and they were about as woke as your own parents. Very socially conservative churchgoing people.
It’s an understandable mistake James. Not your culture neither mine. But it is a strand of American culture and not activist bullshit as you claim.
> Indeed, it has been celebrated in the South among African Americans for 170 years.
That's very strange, since the Civil War only ended 161 years ago.
> One is the official account: Juneteenth commemorates the date on 1984 that the Union army announced that slaves in Galveston, TX were to be immediately freed.
1865? "1984" doesn't make any sense here.
At any rate, if one were going to celebrate such a holiday, it should be on December 18th, which is when the 13th Amendment went into effect, and the last slaves in Delaware were actually freed. Of course, I wouldn't expect Joe Biden, who is *from* Delaware, to want to call attention to the fact that the last black slaves weren't freed for another six months in his home state. And certainly to not want to call attention to the fact that Delaware didn't itself ratify the 13th Amendment until 1901.
Ultimately, I consider the Federal adoption of Juneteenth to be a celebration of the Chinese. In the form of their national icon, the Giant Pander.