Stars, Stripes and Selective Memory: Juneteenth deserves more than a hashtag and a sale
The Juneteenth Issue of City Pulse comes out today. Here is my submission.
Stars, Stripes, and Selective Memory: Why Juneteenth Deserves More Than a Hashtag and a Target Sale
I’m a 54-year-old cis white guy, born in the golden era of grilled cheese sandwiches, Saturday morning cartoons, and the kind of oblivious American freedom that felt like a birthright, not a construct. For the first 40 years of my life, I mistook privilege for normalcy. It wasn’t malice—it was just… America, the whitewashed edition.
Then came Trayvon Martin. A 17-year-old kid shot dead for the crime of walking while Black—and suddenly the land of the free had a different contour. I watched in disbelief as people twisted themselves into moral pretzels to justify his murder, while George Zimmerman was elevated to some kind of neighborhood-watch Batman. Colin Kaepernick takes a knee and America responded by throwing a tantrum with the energy of a toddler who just found out bedtime is real. The cartoonish double standards I’d be blind to for so long.
Fast forward past the outrage cycle, past Kaepernick’s knee (and America’s collective neck craning away), we’ve got folks fighting tooth and nail to keep Juneteenth in the discount bin, all while polishing their flagpoles for July 4th. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts are being axed like they were some radical Marxist spell cast upon HR departments. School curriculums? Scrubbed clean of anything that might give little Johnny the impression that America has ever done anything wrong. And let’s not forget the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture—the literal repository of truth—being forced to remove items. Because apparently, it’s easier to erase history than to teach it. DEI programs are being axed like they were caught teaching kids to read Karl Marx in drag. School boards are banning books faster than they can spell “inclusion.” DEI offices are getting gutted like someone found empathy hiding in the budget, as if saying “Black Lives Matter” is more offensive than, you know, erasing actual Black lives from the American narrative. Black leaders’ names disappear from government buildings like someone’s trying to win a game of DEI Bingo in reverse. First one to wipe out all cultural memory gets a flag pin and a podcast deal. What are we doing? Deleting names from buildings, deleting facts from textbooks, deleting history like it’s a Netflix show that tested poorly in focus groups. All while clutching pearls about “erasing history” whenever someone suggests maybe Robert E. Lee doesn’t deserve his own zip code. And the irony? It’s thick enough to slice with a butter knife. These are often the same people who will chest-thump about “preserving American heritage,” while actively deleting the heritage of Black Americans who, let’s be honest, built the damn country—for free.
So let’s talk about Juneteenth. Not the corporate-sanctioned ice cream flavor or the obligatory tweet from that one senator who voted against making it a federal holiday. Let’s talk about why Juneteenth should be reverent, sobering, and, yes—uncomfortable. Ah yes—Juneteenth, the holiday that shows up on calendars now but still gets side-eyed by half the country like it wandered into the wrong cookout. It’s the day that commemorates when the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas were told they were actually free—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Basically, it’s America saying, “Oh right, we forgot to tell you… our bad!” You’d think a moment like that—the literal end of slavery—might command some reverence. Maybe even fireworks, parades, or a dramatic reading of actual history in classrooms. But no. Instead, Juneteenth gets a discount at Old Navy and maybe a soul food pop-up next to the company vending machines. Meanwhile, July 4th is treated like a national baptism—pure, perfect, unblemished patriotism. Never mind the whole “slavery was still going strong” thing when the Founders were high-fiving each other with quill pens. Juneteenth isn’t a side dish to America’s history—it is the main course. It is the moment the ideals of freedom were finally extended—however begrudgingly, however slowly—to the people who had been written out of the script from the beginning. It is a sacred marker that freedom in this country has never been free—and it has never been evenly distributed. So no, Juneteenth isn’t just another holiday. It’s not a theme day. It’s not a “Happy Juneteenth!” text with a fist emoji. It’s not an excuse to slap red, black, and green on a coffee cup, or t-shirt and call it progress. It’s a day to sit in the discomfort of America’s delayed justice. To acknowledge the centuries-long gap between what we say we are and what we’ve actually been. It’s a time to listen, to learn, to shut up and show up. Juneteenth makes a lot of white people nervous. Because it’s not a holiday you can fake your way through with a bald eagle shirt and a Lee Greenwood playlist. It’s a holiday that whispers, “Hey, America, maybe you’re not the hero in every story.” And America hates that.
This is what Juneteenth is up against: a country that loves the idea of freedom—as long as it doesn’t come with context, discomfort, or accountability. Fun fact, formerly enslaved people were promised 40 acres and a mule as reparations. In that time, that would have been a pathway to fundamentally change the trajectory of Black economic, social, and political life in America. But guess what? Andrew Johnson evicted freed people violently and rescinded the order for any reparations for formerly enslaved people. But guess who did get reparations? If you guessed Confederates who were pardoned and economically empowered through sharecropping and Jim Crow laws, you’re a winner baby.
And now, in 2025, we’re in the middle of what I can only call a Reverse Enlightenment.
And if you’re someone like me—who had the luxury of ignorance for far too long—Juneteenth is a day to reflect on the fact that freedom delayed is freedom denied, and silence is complicity dressed up as politeness. So go ahead, enjoy your fireworks on July 4th. But on June 19th, maybe don’t reach for the party poppers. Instead, reach for a book, a podcast, a conversation. Sit with history. Not the version written by the winners, but the one carried on the backs of the people who were never supposed to survive it.
And if you’re uncomfortable?
Good. You’re finally doing it right.
Think about the narrative you’re hearing about the National Guard being deployed in LA right now. Here we are again watching the beacon of democracy declare war on its own citizens, criminalizing dissent, and pretending the Constitution is more of a vibe than a binding document. It’s less “of the people, by the people, and for the people” and more of “the strongman, by executive order, here’s more freedom. Mind the tear gas, and rubber bullets.” I mean, he has a parade this week, so I guess that’s why he didn’t send the tanks in. LA is a test. Who’s next?
The White House is pushing Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-backed fever dream that’s basically a blueprint for authoritarianism wrapped in a flag. It calls for purging federal agencies of so-called “woke” ideology (read: racial equity), dismantling civil rights protections like they’re graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. Project 2025 isn’t just some bureaucratic restructuring plan—it’s a cultural purge. It’s a scalpel aimed directly at the already-faint pulse of justice in this country. It’s the kind of political necromancy that wants to drag us back to a time when “freedom” had an asterisk—
