Juneteenth, America, and Old White Ladies
“BLACK LIVES MATTER!”
The phrase cut through the staccato of shrill beeps and rustle of plastic bags as I looked ahead in the checkout line to see an older white lady, turned around, smiling warmly at me from behind her basket; she had removed the surgical mask over her mouth as though it might muffle the defiance that I saw in her gray eyes. She was serious. I don’t think she realized she had cut in front of me in the express line, but she was focused on getting my attention.
“BLACK LIVES MATTER!!!” she repeated, this time tilting her head down slowly at me as though she was waiting for me to fulfill my part of some ancient call and response.
Disinterested, but mildly amused, I pursed my lips together in my most authentic, toothless smile and mumbled, “They do!” while nodding with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.
Look — I’m happy we made it here: Black lives do matter.
My LinkedIn notifications continue to flash as, on the hour, corporations release statements crafted with buzzwords and phrases like “diversity”, “inclusion”, “working toward” and “healthy conversations”. I imagine the tense conference calls, as white HR heads and executives — pressured by the cocktail of black trauma broadcast on video nightly, the outpouring of public corporate donations, and Fortune 500 press releases — scramble for boilerplate language on non-committal ways to inform their black employees and consumers that they too, matter.
Today is June 19th.
Undoubtedly, there will be historical facts about “Black Independence Day” sliced and diced into bite-size morsels for your social media consumption as America’s guilt drives it into a binge-like appetite for Black history. Today is the anniversary of thousands of slaves in Texas finding out they were liberated. You will be told of how General Gordon Granger and his Union army blissfully marched into Galveston, hugging every brown body they could before rattling off the Emancipation Proclamation and shouting “You’re free!”. The slaves’ eyes would widen with this newfound knowledge, before they all burst into a simultaneous chorus of “Alleluia!” with tears streaming down their faces.
But it’s not true.
The uncomfortable truth is that the slaves did know about the Emancipation Proclamation. Maybe they didn’t know on January 1st, 1863, but they likely knew a few weeks, a month or maybe even two months later, that they were technically free — they certainly knew 2 full years after. Unfortunately, they were also keenly aware that no piece of paper on which a few White politicians scrawled their signatures, could effectively protect their necks from nooses, ward off whips, shake shackles or otherwise remove them from the greedy grasp of plantation owners still profiting off their sun-scorched backs; no — that, would require force. So the 2000+ Union soldiers of the 13th Army Corps marched into Galveston with scowls on their faces, guns loaded, not so much to announce the terms of freedom that were already known, but prepared to shed blood to enforce it.
And maybe that is the thing to celebrate today.
Not some rousing declaration of independence for Black people, but rather, an anniversary that acknowledges the show of force America deems necessary to make words and promises to Black people ring true. The actions to support Lincoln’s law. The muscle to back up the press release. That action, force, and muscle is what Black America is waiting for to back up all the chants of “Black Lives Matter” tweeted, the black squares of solidarity on social media, and the corporate statements offered by every CEO.
Otherwise, the rest of America just looks and sounds like an old White lady that cut in line — at least put your mask back on.
