Hi and thank you for listening to WUWK?! We’re rapidly approaching the arrival of what I think might be the first ever federal holiday celebration of Juneteenth, seeing as how the house and Senate both just gave approval for making it a federal holiday! With that in mind, I have been pondering how the past, the present and the future all connect around issues of race and racism.
But let’s start with Juneteenth…
Music
If you’re like me, you hadn’t really heard much about the Tulsa Race masacre until this May 31 of 2021 because it wasn’t covered in your high school or even college history classes. I definitely took history of US from the Civil War to the present during my second senior year of college, and I’m pretty sure we never talked about Tulsa at all, beyond maybe a little bit on how the dust bowl affected people and by people I think that nice white man who had been hired by the university as the authority on US history was talking about primarily white farmers.
So when May 31 rolled around, there I was, just another Karen complaining that no one ever told me about this important event in history and that’s why I knew nothing about it - taking no ownership for failing to do any research myself ahead of time and feeling guilt and shame for yet another obnoxious moment of white obliviousness. Ugh.
But I like to try to learn from my mistakes so I actually did a little reading and research on Juneteenth ahead of time. Yea for micro improvements. Here’s what I learned, with some help from the Juneteenth dot com history page and PBS’s webpage on the subject. Back in 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the civil war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This date came to be known as Juneteenth over time.
If you paid more attention in history class than I did, you were probably like “wait a second, wasn’t the Emancipation Proclamation made officially back in January 1863?” So - WFT happened in those two years in between?
Well, there are a couple of versions of the story. Some people say that the messenger who was supposed to deliver the news of the end of slavery was murdered on his way to Texas and that no one else who knew apparently arrived in Texas over the course of the next 2.5 years. That seems kind of unlikely to me.
There’s also the version that says enslavers deliberately withheld the information in order to get a few more years of work out of enslaved people. I find that explanation a bit more plausible. And finally, there is a story that federal troops themselves waited simply so that slave owners could get another cotton harvest in the door before they had to contemplate paying people. There were some people who didn’t really think Abraham Lincoln should be in charge anyway so why bother obeying his silly old proclamation anyhow?
Whatever. It took 2 and half extra years of life in slavery before General Granger and his regiment decided to make it official in Texas.
At the time there were roughly 250,000 enslaved people in the state of Texas alone. And even after the federal troops arrived and made their announcement, some plantation owners still waited til after the current harvest before sharing the news. Which means that Juneteenth wasn’t necessarily when people were actually freed so much as when they later told they had been freed.
A small positive in the Texas white people column is that in 1979 Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday. But in case you thought we were making solid progress, let’s remember that Texas also reaffirmed its intention to continue celebrating January 19 as Confederate Heroes day. Is it just me, or does it seem like that was maybe a way to get out of celebrating Martin Luther King Day on January 17 without making a big scene about it? Just when I think there is some hint of progress, I realize actually we were moonwalking and going backwards the whole time!
Music
I heard a black history professor being interviewed a few weeks ago and what he had to say really stuck with me. I can’t remember the question he was asked, but he explained to the white interviewer in a patient but tired sounding voice that he was told on a regular basis by white people about how if they had lived back in the US before the civil war, they definitely would have been helping out on the underground railroad and they definitely would not have owned slaves. And yet… so many of us were doing just the opposite in those days or we wouldn’t have had a civil war in the first place, right?
He gently suggested that white people like me could look at our current actions to help us more accurately gauge how we might have acted in the past. For example, if you are a white person who is actively taking risks with things like your life, your personal safety, your family’s safety, or you’re making choices that could put your business or your job at risk in someway in order to stand up and advocate for the rights and quality of life of people of color, then it’s reasonable to believe that you would have done so in the past. Maybe you would have been a part of the underground railroad…
But… if you show up for an occasional march and you are willing to engage in philosophical conversations about race, as long as it doesn’t put your life, your relationships, or your job at risk in some way… then it’s likely that THAT is the kind of thing you would have done in the past as well.
When I thought about it in that way, I was less convinced that I would have been a super awesome human being, following in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman, hiding people in my basement, lying to armed white individuals about what I was doing to their faces. And of course, there is always that opportunity to go wallow in a little puddle of shame once again.
But I kind of think this question of how the present might be a reflection of the past, and an omen for the future - it’s kind of inspiring as well. Like, what do I need to change in my present and in the near future, so that I could believe that I would have been a more awesome person in the past?
Music?
With that, and the upcoming Juneteenth holiday in mind, my challenge to myself and to you is what do I want and need to do beyond the easy stuff like talking to like minded white people in order to increase the likelihood that a past incarnation of me would be someone I’d be genuinely proud of if I read about her in the history books? Could I tell my employer I wasn’t going to work on this day and if they wouldn’t give me paid time off for a new national holiday, then I’d be willing to have it come out of my own pocket? Or could I make sure that my employees both had the opportunity to celebrate and that we had a conversation about the holiday in staff meeting? Can I show up at my city’s celebration with more than a cool BLM t-shirt to offer - like maybe I could volunteer so that other people got to just relax and celebrate their holiday, instead of them having to take care of my needs in some way?
In my nearest big city there are going to be a lot of live musicians performing. Maybe instead of just cheering for them and later streaming their stuff for free on spotify or pandora, maybe I can actually purchase access to their music legally.
And could I even take this idea into the future? Maybe I can think about big tough questions like “what about reparations for african americans? Or for Native Americans? What about returning some of the federal lands I like to think of currently as my national parks or BLM land to the care and protection of the people they originally belonged to, even if it means that I personally lose some outdoor access. Maybe I can attend a conversation or rally or workshop about what it means to quote defund the police unquote, even if as a white woman who does have the privilege of feeling pretty damn comfortable right now with the police as they currently exist… maybe I could show up and actively listen to the conversation about defunding the police, and let people of color and their experiences be at the center of that conversation, rather than me the white woman wanting my experience to be at the center.
I’m not going to pretend that any of these small steps makes up for an extra 2 and a half years of slavery, or slavery as a whole, or systemic oppression. But they are better than nothing. So that’s my question for myself - what am I going to do this month in the present so that I can feel better about who I might have been in the past, and who I will be in the future.
And with that in mind - check out the links for a few musicians you might want to support in the show notes. Talk to you soon!
https://www.amythystkiah.com/
http://shop.rhiannongiddens.com/
https://www.goldenrod.com/product-category/sweet-honey-in-the-rock/
But let’s start with Juneteenth…
Music
If you’re like me, you hadn’t really heard much about the Tulsa Race masacre until this May 31 of 2021 because it wasn’t covered in your high school or even college history classes. I definitely took history of US from the Civil War to the present during my second senior year of college, and I’m pretty sure we never talked about Tulsa at all, beyond maybe a little bit on how the dust bowl affected people and by people I think that nice white man who had been hired by the university as the authority on US history was talking about primarily white farmers.
So when May 31 rolled around, there I was, just another Karen complaining that no one ever told me about this important event in history and that’s why I knew nothing about it - taking no ownership for failing to do any research myself ahead of time and feeling guilt and shame for yet another obnoxious moment of white obliviousness. Ugh.
But I like to try to learn from my mistakes so I actually did a little reading and research on Juneteenth ahead of time. Yea for micro improvements. Here’s what I learned, with some help from the Juneteenth dot com history page and PBS’s webpage on the subject. Back in 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the civil war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This date came to be known as Juneteenth over time.
If you paid more attention in history class than I did, you were probably like “wait a second, wasn’t the Emancipation Proclamation made officially back in January 1863?” So - WFT happened in those two years in between?
Well, there are a couple of versions of the story. Some people say that the messenger who was supposed to deliver the news of the end of slavery was murdered on his way to Texas and that no one else who knew apparently arrived in Texas over the course of the next 2.5 years. That seems kind of unlikely to me.
There’s also the version that says enslavers deliberately withheld the information in order to get a few more years of work out of enslaved people. I find that explanation a bit more plausible. And finally, there is a story that federal troops themselves waited simply so that slave owners could get another cotton harvest in the door before they had to contemplate paying people. There were some people who didn’t really think Abraham Lincoln should be in charge anyway so why bother obeying his silly old proclamation anyhow?
Whatever. It took 2 and half extra years of life in slavery before General Granger and his regiment decided to make it official in Texas.
At the time there were roughly 250,000 enslaved people in the state of Texas alone. And even after the federal troops arrived and made their announcement, some plantation owners still waited til after the current harvest before sharing the news. Which means that Juneteenth wasn’t necessarily when people were actually freed so much as when they later told they had been freed.
A small positive in the Texas white people column is that in 1979 Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday. But in case you thought we were making solid progress, let’s remember that Texas also reaffirmed its intention to continue celebrating January 19 as Confederate Heroes day. Is it just me, or does it seem like that was maybe a way to get out of celebrating Martin Luther King Day on January 17 without making a big scene about it? Just when I think there is some hint of progress, I realize actually we were moonwalking and going backwards the whole time!
Music
I heard a black history professor being interviewed a few weeks ago and what he had to say really stuck with me. I can’t remember the question he was asked, but he explained to the white interviewer in a patient but tired sounding voice that he was told on a regular basis by white people about how if they had lived back in the US before the civil war, they definitely would have been helping out on the underground railroad and they definitely would not have owned slaves. And yet… so many of us were doing just the opposite in those days or we wouldn’t have had a civil war in the first place, right?
He gently suggested that white people like me could look at our current actions to help us more accurately gauge how we might have acted in the past. For example, if you are a white person who is actively taking risks with things like your life, your personal safety, your family’s safety, or you’re making choices that could put your business or your job at risk in someway in order to stand up and advocate for the rights and quality of life of people of color, then it’s reasonable to believe that you would have done so in the past. Maybe you would have been a part of the underground railroad…
But… if you show up for an occasional march and you are willing to engage in philosophical conversations about race, as long as it doesn’t put your life, your relationships, or your job at risk in some way… then it’s likely that THAT is the kind of thing you would have done in the past as well.
When I thought about it in that way, I was less convinced that I would have been a super awesome human being, following in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman, hiding people in my basement, lying to armed white individuals about what I was doing to their faces. And of course, there is always that opportunity to go wallow in a little puddle of shame once again.
But I kind of think this question of how the present might be a reflection of the past, and an omen for the future - it’s kind of inspiring as well. Like, what do I need to change in my present and in the near future, so that I could believe that I would have been a more awesome person in the past?
Music?
With that, and the upcoming Juneteenth holiday in mind, my challenge to myself and to you is what do I want and need to do beyond the easy stuff like talking to like minded white people in order to increase the likelihood that a past incarnation of me would be someone I’d be genuinely proud of if I read about her in the history books? Could I tell my employer I wasn’t going to work on this day and if they wouldn’t give me paid time off for a new national holiday, then I’d be willing to have it come out of my own pocket? Or could I make sure that my employees both had the opportunity to celebrate and that we had a conversation about the holiday in staff meeting? Can I show up at my city’s celebration with more than a cool BLM t-shirt to offer - like maybe I could volunteer so that other people got to just relax and celebrate their holiday, instead of them having to take care of my needs in some way?
In my nearest big city there are going to be a lot of live musicians performing. Maybe instead of just cheering for them and later streaming their stuff for free on spotify or pandora, maybe I can actually purchase access to their music legally.
And could I even take this idea into the future? Maybe I can think about big tough questions like “what about reparations for african americans? Or for Native Americans? What about returning some of the federal lands I like to think of currently as my national parks or BLM land to the care and protection of the people they originally belonged to, even if it means that I personally lose some outdoor access. Maybe I can attend a conversation or rally or workshop about what it means to quote defund the police unquote, even if as a white woman who does have the privilege of feeling pretty damn comfortable right now with the police as they currently exist… maybe I could show up and actively listen to the conversation about defunding the police, and let people of color and their experiences be at the center of that conversation, rather than me the white woman wanting my experience to be at the center.
I’m not going to pretend that any of these small steps makes up for an extra 2 and a half years of slavery, or slavery as a whole, or systemic oppression. But they are better than nothing. So that’s my question for myself - what am I going to do this month in the present so that I can feel better about who I might have been in the past, and who I will be in the future.
And with that in mind - check out the links for a few musicians you might want to support in the show notes. Talk to you soon!
https://www.amythystkiah.com/
http://shop.rhiannongiddens.com/
https://www.goldenrod.com/product-category/sweet-honey-in-the-rock/
