How will things change as the newest holiday gets added to the calendar?
Since those protests, corporations across the country established the day as one that employees could take off work, and this week President Biden took recognition one step further, signing legislation that will make June 19 a federal holiday. But if it's suddenly for everyone, "will it still remain Black?" Kevin Young asks in an essay this week. "Can it be both serious and playful, and recognize, as the poet Toi Derricotte reminds us, that 'joy is an act of resistance'?" |
Juneteenth isn't the day that enslaved Americans were set free, Young notes, "but the day the news of Emancipation reached them in Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation." Because of this, the day isn't necessarily a clear-cut celebration, as Kate Masur writes, it's also a reminder "of the unfinished work of confronting slavery's legacy." |
However you consider, celebrate or contemplate Juneteenth, that will change as it becomes a federal holiday. Time-honored traditions could quickly "become lost to a corporate calendar and a megastore selling you a Juneteenth cookout checklist," writes Kaitlyn Greenidge. "You can lose sight of the possibility that exists in marginalized histories, which is the space to imagine another, better world." |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment