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https://playvicious.social/@MoMartin/104371792345372618

"... It's not my holiday, I know that. It's not for me, nor should it be, and I don't want to pretend that it is."

https://playvicious.social/@MoMartin/104371803841466861

"Which isn't to say that Juneteenth isn't an important holiday, or even that it shouldn't be a national holiday, as many people are proposing. Just that my personal connection to it, at this moment, is tenuous at best, and I'm discomforted by my fellow white people who may or may not be pretending otherwise"

He's wrong. If he's a US citizen, it is his history as much as it is mine and therefore his holiday. This is one of the consequences, IMO, of having "regular" history most of the year and Black history for one month. Black history (the history of Blacks in America) is American history, and should be integrated into the entire subject.

I grew up in #California, completely unaware of Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in #Texas. In fact, I discovered Juneteenth by being out of town. My mom got invited to a Juneteenth celebration and took one of my sons with her. I have not ever gone to a formal Juneteenth celebration, but I quietly celebrate it in my own mind.

Remember that slavery wasn't just forcing Black people to work for free, the same way we forced horses and mules and oxen to do the hardest part of our labor. It also meant that lower-skill / lower-income Whites faced unbeatable competition ... how do you earn enough improve your life when your employer / customer can give your job to someone else who will do it for nothing?

We can celebrate Juneteenth if we choose, regardless of one's ancestry, simply for what it represents: that we as a nation are committed to trying to live by those words from the Declaration of Independence: We hold that all [people] are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. If your connection to those words is tenuous, you are in the wrong country and the wrong side of history.

And so, no matter what race or color you are, whether you are White, Black, Brown, Orange, Green, Blue, Purple, or any other color or race, Juneteenth applies to you as much as to anyone else.

I have no opinion on whether your state should make it a holiday. You can celebrate it without a holiday, by commemorating the ideas that it represents and committing to uprooting the vestiges of slavery in your life, your family, your community. I do recognize that we cannot have 365 officially recognized holidays each year.

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