America needs Emancipation Day as a National Holiday

Great Debates
81

I don’t want to assume too much here. Would it be too much to ask you to quote the cite you’re talking about, so we’re talking about the same thing?

And I’m going to warn you in advance, if you point to something like “this holiday marks the end of slavery,” this is trivially disproven by the fact that celebrating an event does not equate to claiming it fell on a certain date.

Nobody is claiming or presenting Juneteenth as the exact date all slavery ended, and you will have no cites to this effect, because there aren’t any.

82

Juneteenth is a holiday that pre-dates the end of slavery.

83

Look people, it’s this simple, Black Americans are not allowed to decide how Black American history should be celebrated.

84

That’s a better argument, but not a definitive one. What a holiday commemorated the first time it was celebrated does not have to remain the same as what it later comes to signify.

85

I’ve already cited to a black woman arguing Juneteenth shouldn’t be the day to celebrate the end of slavery.

86

Less pedantry, after it was already mentioned that marking a day for a celebration is not the same as the actual day an event took place.

BTW like with many other celebrations in other countries, the days for celebrations are set by convenience and a bit arbitrarily like in this case when historians point to several days that can be used as the last day when slaves were freed in the USA

87

If it is going to be a national holiday, are only black opinions allowed? If there is a discussion in the future about Lincoln’s birthday being retained as a holiday, should we tell those minorities to get lost because we created it first?

88

They can’t point to a day before the last slaves were freed as the day that the last slaves were freed.

89

Uh… In this case, a president that was not black and many senators that were not, voted to approve; those congress votes also included other minorities.

90

Just like July 4th? Or all of our 3 day weekend holidays?

91

No, I strongly disagree.

The normal reading of “This year is the 156th anniversary of the holiday, which marks the end of slavery in the United States” is that slavery ended on this date, one hundred and fifty-six years ago. The pendant talking point is saying the statement should be interpreted differently.

92

Didn’t I explain this above?

93

Jesus wasn’t born in December.

In other news: Some Ultra-orthodox Jews don’t think Israel should exists.

94

Not that I saw, want to point to it?

95

Incorrect. The “end of slavery” was a diffuse process beginning with the Emancipation Proclamation and ending with ratification of the 13th Amendment.

One could argue that the beginning of that process is the best event to commemorate. One could argue that the end is the best. The argument that actually won is an intermediate date that has been celebrated by freed Black people for over a century.

All arguments are equally valid. Juneteenth has tradition behind it, and now has force of law. The end.

96

And this is my only bitch about the holiday. Pick February 11th or September 14th or any other day as a celebration to commemorate the end of slavery. But to pick this day and state that is WAS the end of slavery is false history. False.

97

If I put “The end” at the conclusion of my arguments does that work equally well?

98

It’s been demonstrated several times that nobody is saying this WAS the end of slavery, and that you’ve misconstrued someone else’s cites to make this argument.

Hug that strawman harder, maybe some strawchildren will come out of it.

99

Based on the logic in this thread, we really should be celebrating the treaty of paris as our independence day.

100

Perhaps if you made some valid arguments it might work. It seems unlikely that we’re going to find out, though.