If anyone thinks that commemorating Juneteenth with a federal holiday will mollify the extreme fringe elements of Critical Race Theory-loving race baiters and political hacks… well, they are likely mistaken.
My knowledge of Juneteenth was limited to it being a Texas commemoration of her being the last state to get the official word of slavery being illegal, in June of 1865. It was a great day for Texans to laud, and already recognized by 49 states.
Certainly, June 19, 1865, is important to note in Texas’ rich state history, but giving federal employees this bribe of a day off with pay is absurd. Who thinks that African-Americans will now wave off indignities suffered over their lifetimes? Also, by using the non-word Juneteenth (which Texan locals have rightly honored for generations), non-Texans have made this significant date sound puerile.
Politicians again downplay real milestones in order to placate those who can’t be placated. It will never be enough. Who thinks this hollow gesture improves anything to do with race relations?
The Emancipation Proclamation is not a federal holiday, and neither is the surrender at Appomattox or the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution, which are inarguably more significant milestones in US history. None of these are federal holidays.
But some knucklehead, and I mean that with all due disrespect, thinks that the day a white union military officer arrived in Galveston on a horse, essentially a messenger, and reads a letter in public, well, he saved the day. That is far from inspiring.
We now have the unpaid costs of a federal holiday for commemorating what was already the law. No mention of the still insane violent pushback by all people in the South that summer of 1865 and for many years to come. No mention of over a quarter million northern lives lost for the cause of ending the Confederacy and its bastard spawn of slavery.
Both parties in congress put on a helluva show, and Biden goes along because his handlers told him to. They know that most people will say, “so what?” The irony is that there are probably a lot of closet Klansmen on the federal payroll. They get the day off, too.