Being White on Juneteenth
There’s a particular kind of dissonance living in a society that observes Juneteenth as a Federal holiday, but still incarcerates millions of Black people, normalizes police violence, won’t teach about race and racism in schools, and seeks to disenfranchise voters on the basis of their race. Never mind the fact that our country won’t engage with the idea of reparations for slavery, an institution not only responsible for subjugation, dehumanization, and violence against millions of enslaved people over thirteen generations, but is also the very basis of the economic system that has produced extraordinary wealth for so many of us white people. It’s confounding to think there are hundreds of thousands of white people with paid time off today who regularly choose to maintain the status quo: school segregation, wealth hoarding and economic inequality, housing scarcity, and state and interpersonal violence.
To be sure, I have reverence for the significance of Juneteenth: a day that marks the news of emancipation reaching enslaved people on the western plantations of Texas. It is an occasion that celebrates the many ways in which Black people have thrived and modeled a kind of freedom in spite of the continued efforts by individuals, systems, and the state, to subjugate and oppress them. Just this morning, Mia Birdsong discussed marronage, “the act of freeing oneself from slavery and creating free communities in the midst of a slaveholding society,” as a way to think about how we practice a different kind of freedom– one that is interconnected and defined by mutuality– amidst living in such perilous conditions.
I woke up thinking about Juneteenth and my place in it. I feel a familiar uneasiness about my own culpability, the ways in which I perpetuate harm and further the legacy of my enslaving ancestors (and the many more who were complicit in maintaining the status quo). But more so, I feel connected to the grief that sits at the base of my solar plexus, pressing insistently between my lungs and my heart; an unexpressed sob for a different future than the one we seem to be headed for.
The future I long for is one in which the vast majority of white people reckon with our history, take responsibility for ourselves and our ancestors, and repair harm. In so doing we collectively learn the value of living interdependently and find our footing in solidarity with Black and Indigenous people alongside the many others our society has marginalized for far too long, and together we’re remaking the world anew*:
All people are guaranteed housing, healthcare, a college education, dignified work, family care, an inheritance, and a basic income (Solana Rice, Liberation in a Generation)
The Majority of people feel an inherent sense of dignity, safety, and belonging and from this place, we get to be in authentic intimate relationships across our differences (Prentis Hemphill, The Embodiment Institute and Staci K. Haines, Generative Somatics)
Our communities, towns, and cities, have the tools and resources to manage conflict while maintaining our sense of interdependence and respect for the fundamental dignity of all people (credit to so many abolitionists, among them Angela Davis and adrienne maree brown)
There is sufficient time to prioritize our relationships, families, and communities and we honor the labor required to care for one another (Ai Jen Poo, Caring Across Generations)
I want to wake up on Juneteenth when this future is not only possible but where there is evidence that it is on its way in our lifetime, where the dissonance between the horrors and the beauty of the world is not so striking.
Dear reader, you may think I am idealistic, but the trajectory we’re on is perilous. Powerful countries have waged war and are committing multiple genocides. Democracies are crumbling, not because they don’t work, but because they were never intended to work for all of us. Children are dying by their own hands at rates never seen before, people are hungry, unhoused, and desperate not because of their own moral failings but because the system was designed to make the majority of us disposable.
But there is good news, great news in fact. The remaking of the world is not an insurmountable task. Instead, it takes dedication and practice; we cannot expect to succeed at new ways of being and living without building new muscles. It is my experience that the only way to bring about a new world is to practice it in the here and now in community with others. As Mia Birdsong says, we have to practice our way to freedom.
Had we white people done our work, this Juneteenth could be a day for a full throated celebration that we get to be a part of. For now, we must recognize and take responsibility for the contradictions we are living, the longing in our hearts, and dedicate ourselves to the work ahead.
*I’ve included ideas from different practitioners and leaders that taken together describe a future I’m longing for. I have named/linked out to sources for you to learn more and to give credit to whom it is due. So many of these ideas have a lineage that I don’t know enough about and I wish to acknowledge that I’ve likely omitted many people who deserve credit.
—
Enclosed is a list of projects and organizations that are crucial to my own learning that I encourage you to support in honor of Juneteenth:
Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth