When I was a kid, Juneteenth was always a magically timed celebration. School was just letting out, the frigid Minnesotan air would hastily change to thick heat that stuck to your skin, and the church barbecue would last well into dusk—music playing, folks laughing. There was a sense of grounding for me in understanding that the roots of my being were not confined to the traditional nuclear family but also included the in-between relationships. The unspoken kinship felt when Black people commune and love, together. It would often take us over an hour to get our plates, and our goodbyes, together to leave.
This Juneteenth, the air is also thick here in Northern California, but not necessarily due to heat. This year some people are hugging friends, lovers, and family for the first time in over a year. Another traumatic fire season is quickly approaching. Online we’ve witnessed a full cycle of black squares, to yellow ones, to Palestinian flags, to rainbow gradients. And I cannot help succumbing to a feeling of whiplash, with a touch of déjà vu.
Juneteenth comes at a time where we, as a country and a species, are being asked (once again) to grapple with the vestiges of not only the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade but also the deep and long-lasting harm white settler colonialism produces globally. As I hope all of us know, the slave trade created the blueprint for all forms of structural, societal, and political racist subjugation.
Hell, people even created entirely new forms of art to help justify the kidnapping, torture, and subsequent enslavement of millions of humans.* New legislative sectors would be made, and new industries would be built, on the backs of people who were astrologers, wise women, revolutionaries, farmers, sailors, poets, healers, and artists.
What does it mean to celebrate “freedom” when so much has been stolen in the process? What does it mean, as a Black artist, to make with this history both within and behind us?
