How celebrations are enough?
40 th annual
In before ‘They’re only celebrating because it’s a holiday!’
That’s why I’m posting things from before it was a federal holiday.
Do you want more?
And if I post ten million pictures from ten million households of people sitting on their asses on June 19, then what does that mean? Or people working at Staples on June 19?
I never said, nor meant to imply that no single person had a festival or had a good time eating food on June 19. I said that it was a very limited practice that even after this year, so few people celebrated it so that making it a fake historical date was not appropriate.
And it’s not a single festival. It’s basically any city of decent size.
The Sacramento area had eight festivals in 2019.
But it is just political advocacy and people show up for food and carnie games. Do you want to be the mayor of a city that turns down a permit from the NAACP? I sure wouldn’t. The date is not historical and people who show up to the festival aren’t cheering their heads off for the end of slavery.
And if they are, they are factually wrong. Why perpetuate it?
This says it all…
Evidence of multiple festivals.
Evidence of hundreds of festivals.
You would get along well with Justice Gorsuch and his hyper-literalism.
Because it’s their holiday. They’re the ones who celebrate it. National holidays don’t create new holidays. They are recognition of existing holidays by the national government.
If you want to create a holiday to celebrate the real end of slavery, you are free to do so. Maybe you can then get enough people celebrating it that people would want to recognize it as a federal holiday.
But you don’t get to treat a holiday created by black people differently than the ones created by white people. There are very few holidays that are actually on the day of the thing they celebrate. I’ll just go through the national holiday list:
- New Year’s Day: Is indeed the day that we change the year number on our calendars.
- Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King: always celebrated on a Monday, not actually King’s birthday.
- Inauguration Day: Does actually occur on that day.
- Washington’s Birthday: again always on a Monday. Also some calendar shenanigans.
- Memorial Day: Moving day that is not the actual day of the end of the Civil War.
- Independence Day: not actually the day the US became independent nor the day that people signed the Declaration of Independence.
- Labor Day: A moving holiday. Depending on how you look at it, it either has no single event to celebrate, or is the anniversary of a Labor demonstration that occurred September 5, 1882.
- Columbus Day: A moving holiday that has nothing to with when Columbus did anything. It was an attempt to placate Italian Americans about a lynching. But that lynching happened in March.
- Veterans Day: The end of WWII did actually occur on that day in 1918.
- Thanksgiving Day: Moving holiday that is not when the Pilgrims arrived or had their first thanksgiving feast.
- Christmas: Almost certainly not the day Jesus of Nazareth was born.
So only three federal holidays, one of which only occurs every four years, is celebrated on the day of the year when what it commemorates actually happened. At least Juneteenth is the day that the slaves discovered they were free in Texas–that gives it a leg up on most of the others.
You never celebrated Juneteenth. Thus you don’t have a say when it should be celebrated.
So as before, because Columbus Day was/is only celebrated by white people, should we tell all of those minorities just to piss off if/when we are debating about getting rid of it? In other words, this is our day. We should racially or gender segregate debates on issues? This is the brave new world?
ETA: Not segregate. Just deny them a voice entirely.
In this case, because it was Black people who were enslaved for centuries, and given the long history of self-determination being taken from Black people in the US, YES I THINK IT’S THE BLACK OPINION THAT SHOULD COUNT.
FFS can’t the White majority shut up and sit down for just one time and let the affected community make the decision?
I respect your right to have an opinion, whether or not I agree with that opinion.
In this case I think you’re wrong but I have read your words and understand why you have your opinion. It is not without merit. However, I do think yours is a minority view and that the final decision in this case should be with the community most affected, the Black people of the United States.
Some of them agree with you - I know, because I’ve run into a couple of Black people who argue as you do. But the vast majority I’ve personally encountered are either OK with June 19 or have been celebrating June 19 all their lives. I’m happy to bow to the will of the majority here, even if not 100% historically accurate or if other dates could also fit.
Personally, I don’t have a dog in this race. Some of my neighbors, though, very much do. I’ll defer to them in this matter.
