I'm 100% with you on this. We should NOT load up Juneteenth with all sorts of contemporary politics. We should just, simply, celebrate the abolition of slavery. Period. Celebrate Freedom. It will evolve to be a celebration of black culture without any help. And yeah, I'm digging on the barbeque.
Yeah, but I think celebrating a person tends to be a bit more of a problem than something unambiguously good like ending slavery. If you celebrate MLK, you might have too address some of his problematic communist viewpoints, or with Lincoln, you have to start talking about some of the civil rights violations. A holiday celebrating emancipation is just going to be inherently more universally popular.
Like it or not, holidays don’t take on that festive spirit until various corporations pump them up. Coke et. al. for Christmas, costumes and candy for Halloween, purveyors of chocolate bunnies and egg dye for Easter, Macy’s for Thanksgiving…
Juneteenth means millions of families who overcame hardship generally with little support from government or corporate America, and let’s not count welfare and other programs that never amounted to net positives for the majority of participants.
Juneteenth was named because Lincoln couldn’t remember when he signed the proclamation. Or perhaps he did, but never got around to formalizing it before he had that bad night at the theater.
Considering a corporate angle for Juneteenth, or a political angle outside what politicians have done for decades, cynically, makes me uneasy. Juneteenth wasn’t the Bell of Freedom so much as a proclamation of “Well. Thanks. You’re on your own. Also, have you considered Liberia?“
Very helpful, very gracious.
I think that any celebration of emancipation by the government, whatever it’s composition might be, would look like nothing more than self congratulatory virtue signaling.
I also think that a genuine celebration of history would include acknowledgment of the traditional, self supporting families and genuinely woke communities (not the politically bastardized versions we’ve come to know) of citizens who often did not feel like citizens, who learned how to navigate a hostile society, and the successful descendants of slaves who have great stories to tell.
And there are great stories of struggle and triumph. But for some reason, corporate media does not seem interested beyond the usual dozen or so approved standard bearers. I wonder why.
The ritual will define the holiday, as drinking does for St. Patricks or Cinco de Mayo, or turkey for Thanksgiving. Barbecue seems like the obvious choice: so should we celebrate the stamping out of the vestiges of slavery bt eatingvhigh on the hog?
I would upgrade, given your 90% discount, but the links seem to inly take me to $50 per year, not $5. Did I misunderstand?
In my black circles, juneteenth is basically just summer parties and thinkpieces. A good time sure— especially as a chance to listen to golden age (50s-70s) black music and be 13% more woke than usual— but unremarkable.
The best american holidays are when the rituals and themes become divorced from any context besides the holiday itself.
Examples:
-anything associated with Christmas (mistletoe??)
-Turkey and big buckle hats on thanksgiving
-the whole concept of trick or treating
- St Patrick himself (most people don’t even know who he was or what he did— the name St Patrick is just a pointer to the holiday itself)
I want some little white kids in 40 years to be excited for Juneteenth not because they are super race conscious— but because they are excited to listen to Organ hymns, pinch their classmates who aren’t wearing gold, and play in the neighborhood basketball tournament.
It is a fake holiday because no one has an idea how to celebrate it. Usually, what is supposed to happen with these holidays is that they are celebrated locally and then they spread and are officiated.
What I am going to do today is just hang around and maybe go to an Irish pub this afternoon and eat some fish and chips. There is more official capacity to a random military squadron’s cookout than Juneteenth. There is more understanding of what the thing is supposed to be. No one celebrates it locally. I am not aware of any place in the country that has a strong conception of what it is supposed to mean.
It could be a black Passover (though why not just make Passover a federal holiday? A growing amount of Christians are beginning to celebrate it for Jesus and us Jews have to use our paid time off to celebrate Jewish holidays. It would be nice.) or it could just be a once a year government-run protest. Or it could just be like Labor Day and be another barbecue?
Trying to capture the imagination on this though seems foolhardy, because it seems artificial from the get-go. There is not a great story of why I or anyone I know should participate rather than just doing nothing.
Eh. Labor Day, Thanksigivng and Mother's Day were all top-down holidays that then developed their own rituals afterward (though sometimes it took a few decades).
Thanksgiving was regional prior to federalization. Labor Day had nothing, but it was explicitly to give workers a day off, so workers just figured to host barbecues. Mother’s Day is not a holiday where the government gives you time off.
Juneteenth was poorly engineered. Each other had things that counted towards their eventual success.
Juneteenth was a holiday invented to celebrate George Floyd being anointed a modern saint and the woke riots of 2020. That's what the holiday means. If you celebrate it, that's what you celebrate.
Around here all the left leaning institutions close for the day and the right ones stay open. Therefore I conclude that it is a leftist anti-white holiday celebrating wokeness and 2020 rioting.
I think too many white people would see celebrating it as a form of cultural appropriation, and there are plenty of progressives who would be happy to agree and try to get such people fired.
Absolutely, though, you want to make a holiday popular, make it an excuse to party.
>Ultimately, public holidays like this are the responsibility of government to run—not necessarily the federal government, although that would be ideal, but governments somewhere
Are St. Patricks and Cinco celebrations generally run by some level of government somewhere in the US?
It needs a name that matches the gravitas and significance of the occasion - Juneteenth sounds like some random kids festival
Freedom Day or Liberation Day would be sick
I still like Emancipation Day. Liberation Day sounds cool too, though.
I'm 100% with you on this. We should NOT load up Juneteenth with all sorts of contemporary politics. We should just, simply, celebrate the abolition of slavery. Period. Celebrate Freedom. It will evolve to be a celebration of black culture without any help. And yeah, I'm digging on the barbeque.
We already have MLK day and Lincoln's birthday.
Yeah, but I think celebrating a person tends to be a bit more of a problem than something unambiguously good like ending slavery. If you celebrate MLK, you might have too address some of his problematic communist viewpoints, or with Lincoln, you have to start talking about some of the civil rights violations. A holiday celebrating emancipation is just going to be inherently more universally popular.
Like it or not, holidays don’t take on that festive spirit until various corporations pump them up. Coke et. al. for Christmas, costumes and candy for Halloween, purveyors of chocolate bunnies and egg dye for Easter, Macy’s for Thanksgiving…
Juneteenth means millions of families who overcame hardship generally with little support from government or corporate America, and let’s not count welfare and other programs that never amounted to net positives for the majority of participants.
Juneteenth was named because Lincoln couldn’t remember when he signed the proclamation. Or perhaps he did, but never got around to formalizing it before he had that bad night at the theater.
Considering a corporate angle for Juneteenth, or a political angle outside what politicians have done for decades, cynically, makes me uneasy. Juneteenth wasn’t the Bell of Freedom so much as a proclamation of “Well. Thanks. You’re on your own. Also, have you considered Liberia?“
Very helpful, very gracious.
I think that any celebration of emancipation by the government, whatever it’s composition might be, would look like nothing more than self congratulatory virtue signaling.
I also think that a genuine celebration of history would include acknowledgment of the traditional, self supporting families and genuinely woke communities (not the politically bastardized versions we’ve come to know) of citizens who often did not feel like citizens, who learned how to navigate a hostile society, and the successful descendants of slaves who have great stories to tell.
And there are great stories of struggle and triumph. But for some reason, corporate media does not seem interested beyond the usual dozen or so approved standard bearers. I wonder why.
The ritual will define the holiday, as drinking does for St. Patricks or Cinco de Mayo, or turkey for Thanksgiving. Barbecue seems like the obvious choice: so should we celebrate the stamping out of the vestiges of slavery bt eatingvhigh on the hog?
I would upgrade, given your 90% discount, but the links seem to inly take me to $50 per year, not $5. Did I misunderstand?
Just updated the link and it works on my other account. Here is the link again though just in case.
https://peteribanks.substack.com/b237e54e
ahhh weird lemme replace it if its broken.
In my black circles, juneteenth is basically just summer parties and thinkpieces. A good time sure— especially as a chance to listen to golden age (50s-70s) black music and be 13% more woke than usual— but unremarkable.
The best american holidays are when the rituals and themes become divorced from any context besides the holiday itself.
Examples:
-anything associated with Christmas (mistletoe??)
-Turkey and big buckle hats on thanksgiving
-the whole concept of trick or treating
- St Patrick himself (most people don’t even know who he was or what he did— the name St Patrick is just a pointer to the holiday itself)
I want some little white kids in 40 years to be excited for Juneteenth not because they are super race conscious— but because they are excited to listen to Organ hymns, pinch their classmates who aren’t wearing gold, and play in the neighborhood basketball tournament.
It is a fake holiday because no one has an idea how to celebrate it. Usually, what is supposed to happen with these holidays is that they are celebrated locally and then they spread and are officiated.
What I am going to do today is just hang around and maybe go to an Irish pub this afternoon and eat some fish and chips. There is more official capacity to a random military squadron’s cookout than Juneteenth. There is more understanding of what the thing is supposed to be. No one celebrates it locally. I am not aware of any place in the country that has a strong conception of what it is supposed to mean.
It could be a black Passover (though why not just make Passover a federal holiday? A growing amount of Christians are beginning to celebrate it for Jesus and us Jews have to use our paid time off to celebrate Jewish holidays. It would be nice.) or it could just be a once a year government-run protest. Or it could just be like Labor Day and be another barbecue?
Trying to capture the imagination on this though seems foolhardy, because it seems artificial from the get-go. There is not a great story of why I or anyone I know should participate rather than just doing nothing.
Eh. Labor Day, Thanksigivng and Mother's Day were all top-down holidays that then developed their own rituals afterward (though sometimes it took a few decades).
Thanksgiving was regional prior to federalization. Labor Day had nothing, but it was explicitly to give workers a day off, so workers just figured to host barbecues. Mother’s Day is not a holiday where the government gives you time off.
Juneteenth was poorly engineered. Each other had things that counted towards their eventual success.
Juneteenth was a holiday invented to celebrate George Floyd being anointed a modern saint and the woke riots of 2020. That's what the holiday means. If you celebrate it, that's what you celebrate.
Around here all the left leaning institutions close for the day and the right ones stay open. Therefore I conclude that it is a leftist anti-white holiday celebrating wokeness and 2020 rioting.
I think too many white people would see celebrating it as a form of cultural appropriation, and there are plenty of progressives who would be happy to agree and try to get such people fired.
Absolutely, though, you want to make a holiday popular, make it an excuse to party.
>Ultimately, public holidays like this are the responsibility of government to run—not necessarily the federal government, although that would be ideal, but governments somewhere
Are St. Patricks and Cinco celebrations generally run by some level of government somewhere in the US?