Juneteenth, the day marking the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States, is Saturday. It is technically the anniversary of the announcement of emancipation in Galveston, Texas, some two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation; in the grand scheme of things, this is as unimportant as the fact that Jesus Christ was almost certainly born in the spring and not December. Or that Independence Day could be celebrated on July 2, as John Adams assumed it would be, or Aug. 2, when the Declaration was actually signed. But I digress.
President Joe Biden signed an act proclaiming Juneteenth a national holiday this week. It passed unanimously in the Senate, though 14 House Republicans voted no. Some of them offered reasons. Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas thinks we have too many holidays as it is. Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana thinks the day was created “out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country.” Juneteenth was first celebrated in 1866, some 57 years before the Frankfurt School was founded and more than 100 years before anyone spoke the words “critical race theory.”
Other Republicans seemed fine with the idea in general, except that the official name is “Juneteenth National Independence Day,” which they said could be “confusing” to people who might get it mixed up with Independence Day. This ignores the fact that: A) it absolutely will not, and 2) no one is going to call it by its full legislative name in any event.
Tennessee’s own Scott DesJarlais was among the 14, which is incredible because it meant he actually showed up to vote!
Now that it’s a fait accompli, it’s time for the hypocritical faux-intellectual populist vomiterati to chime in.
Charlie Kirk says Juneteenth is an “affront” to American unity because “we now have two summer holidays” with one “based on race.” (Labor Day is also technically in the summer, though summer also doesn’t technically begin until the solstice, which is the day after Juneteenth.) Candace Owens says Juneteenth is a segregationist effort, because Democrats supported segregation. Or something. Candace does not understand political realignment.
Their insistence that we don’t need another day off, first of all, is like the kid who reminds the teacher she forgot to give the class any homework. Give me a day off in June and you can call it “J.R. Lind Is Extremely Bad Day” if you want to.
Secondly, there’s a perfectly reasonable conservative position that we should celebrate Juneteenth as a whole nation, which these dissenters would grasp if their motive force was actually advancing conservative thought rather than grifting off Trumpism.
If, as these people claim, they consider the founding documents as America’s mission statements, we are striving toward a more perfect Union and we seek to preserve the blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our posterity. And a big part of that is having our deeds living up to the words of the Declaration (“… that all men are created equal”).
If you truly believe in equality of opportunity, if you believe all the things aforesaid, if you really consider slavery the moral stain it was, then Juneteenth is indeed a holiday for Americans. All of us. In a practical sense, did emancipation mean more to Black Americans? Of course. But if you really believe in what the declaration and Constitution say and you aren’t just a fetishist who quotes the documents selectively for your own callous and cynical purposes, then it’s impossible for you to see Juneteenth as anything but a unifying holiday for all of America, celebrating a big if belated step on the journey toward that more perfect Union.
You can believe that the 1619 Project is specious as a work of history and still see Juneteenth as a worthy commemoration of an important marker on the journey that is America. You can object to CRT and still see its value.
Don’t get it twisted: The Civil War was about slavery. You can ask the traitors themselves. They tried to tell you. More than 365,000 American soldiers, therefore, died to end slavery, and another 290,000 were sent to die to preserve it.
Lincoln abhorred slavery, rightly so, even if he had less than enlightened views about racial equality generally. But as he explained to Horace Greeley, his motive force was preserving the Union. He did after all take an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
As he wrote to Greeley: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
Through emancipation, Lincoln saved the Union that we celebrate on July 4. Juneteenth isn’t a repudiation of July 4, it’s a fulfillment of its promise. And all of us should celebrate that.
