Juneteenth: An Opportunity for Learning, Growth, and Imagination

Juneteenth is the celebration of the end of the era that first weaponized “race” to fuel discrimination, divisiveness, and the many contemptible falsehoods that justified slavery. Slavery of a people whose hands, blood, and tears were essential in building the United States, but whose historical relevance and contributions are conspiratorially disregarded and debased.  

Specifically, Juneteenth marks the day when thousands of federal troops rode into Galveston, Texas – two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation — to announce that slavery had ended, and that the nearly 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas were free, as were the more than 3.5 million Black Americans enslaved in other parts of the United States. 

And in 2021, after George Floyd’s murder, a year earlier, led to an outcry that rang across the globe, Juneteenth was elevated to a federal holiday. This elevation comes during a time when there are widespread efforts to continue the distortion of American history and diminish the impact race and racism have had on the U.S. and, as an inevitable result, continues slavery’s impact into the future. 

In defiance of these nonsensical efforts, this Juneteenth provides us all an opportunity to pause and delve into the study of Black slavery in America; the hard-fought Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Thirteenth Amendment it took to finally defeat slavery; the short-lived Reconstruction that followed emancipation when some Black families were given 40 acres of land to own (the majority of it eventually confiscated), elected to public office (eventually ran out of office), and started integrated public school systems (eventually not allowed to attend); the decades of extreme backlash, brutality, lynching, death, and legalized segregation and oppression that continued slavery’s impact from Reconstruction through the mid-20th Century; and then the Civil Rights era that ended legalized racism but allowed unconscious bias and institutionalized oppression that continue to heavily burden the Black community and severely slow the community’s economic progress. 

Through our collective studying, we deepen our knowledge and create the conditions that may move us, as a society, beyond feelings of guilt and the fear of losing power. Perhaps our collective consciousness can motivate us towards a dismantling of all forms of oppression, lead to the promulgation of laws and corporate action that prioritize equity over mere equality and drives business and economic decisions that center on the most marginalized in our communities. 

Then, as our learning leads to growth, we can begin a collective imagining of a different, more optimistic future wherein there is true “freedom”, a collective liberation, without the constraints and bilateral harm of bias and institutional oppression. We can rise above our insecurities, selfishness, and inhibitions and embrace a world in which we actively recognize our stereotypes and biases and are concerted in our efforts to never act thereon.  

Such exercises of fanciful envisioning seem dubious to some, even foolish. However, it was the hope of something better—the certainty that something better was obtainable—that I can only imagine helped drive motivation towards securing emancipation in the 19th Century. This weekend, as we celebrate Juneteenth and continue our pursuit of something better, let us start to actively learn about Black history, grow in our approach to issues of race and the impact our everyday actions have on each other, and imagine together liberatory futures.

* * * 

I recently had the honor of speaking at Foster Insights for the University of Washington Foster School of Business. I traced the history of race inequality in the U.S. from enslavement to present, offering my perspective as a Black woman born just over a century after slavery and tracing slavery’s continued impact on me and the Black community at large to this day. I then offer how I believe corporations can change hearts and minds, set new standards and expectations for society at large, and help accelerate our progress towards racial equity. I have linked a video of my talk which connects the dots from our past, current state, and future. I hope this Juneteenth inspires us all to reflect on our past and current actions and how they are shaping our collective future.