Juneteenth

I remember the day, the date, the moment I learned about Juneteenth.


Austin, Texas. October 10, 2016.
The annual conference for the Association of Middle Level Education .

I walk into a room at the Austin Convention Center. The room is almost filled to capacity, but I find a seat on the edge, right toward the front. Clearly, Marlena Gross-Taylor's session about honoring culture and diversity with colleagues is going to be good.

And I am ready. After all, I've just delivered my own presentation--my first legitimate conference presentation ever--about the importance of teaching global citizenship to middle schoolers.

And I'd killed it. Everyone had been nodding their heads, firing on all cylinders alongside me. The presentation had gone immeasurably well and now I was ready to sit back and hear an inspiring speaker talk about culture and diversity--conversations I'd been having at my own school for months. I was floating. Flying. Soaring as I walked into the room.

And, yes, if you can't tell, I was also smug, cocky, and self-confidently woke beyond measure (a term I cringe now as I write it). I was an ally. I was one of the other white folks in the room. I got it. This was my jam.

And I was about to be humbled.

The first activity included a Bingo game that asked each of us to fill out answers to questions about culture. We had to walk around the room,  finding people who could answer a variety of questions. Examples included finding someone who could explain what a Quinceañera is, or someone who has had their name mispronounced, knows what ASL is, or who has eaten lumpia.


After about ten minutes, I'd connected with a number of folks. It was a great ice breaker; we all knew some things, and we all learned some things. Some people had called out bingo, but I had one more square to fill in.


Find someone who knows what "Juneteenth" is.


June what?


I was 32 years old. I'd been a history major in college. I had taught US history. I was chair of the history department at my school. I had never heard of Juneteenth before in my life.


So when I found myself enthusiastically asking a Black woman from Ohio who had been teaching 4th grade special ed since the 1970s, "Hi, do you know what Juneteenth is?," I suddenly felt so small.


"Oh honey...(then a long pause)...Yes, I know what Juneteenth is."


She shook her head slowly and looked me in the eyes.


"What do you teach?"


I spent the rest of the day kind of in a daze, drifting from session to session at the conference. I wasn't hungry at lunch.


According to Google on my iPhone, Juneteenth is the American holiday celebrating the date--June 19th, 1865--when the final enslaved people (in the state of Texas where I was standing at the moment, no less) were informed of the Union victory and that they were free in the USA.


I went for a run along the Colorado River. I remember stopping and standing, sweating in the sun, and looking out into the rippling brown water.


And I just couldn't get the look of disappointment this woman had on her face out of my head.


And, me...I just felt so embarrassed. So ashamed. I had so many questions...


I thought Abraham Lincoln was the "Great Emancipator" who ended slavery, but he died two months before the final slaves were freed in Texas.


And why did Juneteenth seem only to be recognized, only celebrated, only known by Black Americans?


Why had my history teachers never told me about Juneteenth?

---------------------


I have recently been told that a commitment is more important than a goal.


And for me, as a white man, being anti-racist needs to be a commitment. I need to do it every day. It reminds me of how I felt during my first few months of marriage or fatherhood, when I realized I can't just try to be a good husband or a good dad...it needs to be something I recommit to each day.


Being anti-racist is like that, I think. Because every morning when I wake up as a white man I have to actively support the positions for which I stand. The default is to be silent and to allow things to function as they naturally do. "Business as usual." But in America, business as usual for someone like me is also enabling white privilege built on the racist backbone of America's history (and present) to reign supreme. It's not just allowing it, it's condoning it.


Juneteenth recognizes a moment in history when people said, we are going to be who we say we are. We say we are the land of the brave, the equal, and the free, but until action is taken and we ensure that no person is left behind, we fail ourselves as a nation, as a human race.


---------------------


This Friday, June 19th, is Juneteenth.


I won't be cooking a special meal. I won't be buying anyone gifts or wearing a special outfit. But I am going to tell everyone I know that it is Juneteenth. I am going to talk to my family and my kids about it.


And I am going to share this list of 137 organizations people can donate to in support of Black lives and communities.


I don't know if saying "Happy Juneteenth" makes sense. In fact, I am pretty certain it doesn't. Instead, I'll opt for a simple reminder that "It's Juneteenth. The work is not done." Ending racism is not the work of BIPOC (Black ND Indigenous People of Color). It is the work of white people, just as educating white people is not the work of BIPOC.


Transforming myself cannot be a goal, it must be a commitment. It is a commitment I make on my own, for this is MY work, MY evolution, MY eradication of the threads of racism that make up the fabric of my own white identity.


Each day, my job is to listen, and to learn, to do my best, and own my mistakes. It is a commitment I will renew with each day's dawn...yes, that's it: a re-commitment, for the work is never done.