Juneteenth - a white boomer's perspective

Juneteenth probably means very little to the average American, certainly nothing extraordinarily personal. Perhaps this year, America's 250th, it should, if we can collectively discipline ourselves to have some level of gratitude for our nation and its history. I'm envisioning the streets of Galveston, Texas, in 1866 at the first formal celebration, or Jubilee Day, on the anniversary of the announcement delivered by Union General Gordan Granger of General Order #3, that there was no more slavery in Texas. The celebration involved dressing up, feasting, and religious activities of prayer, singing, and storytelling. 

What we don't see is any evidence of wide-spread cynicism and grumbling that we might see today. "Why did it take so long to get us the message that slavery was over?", "Lincoln is such a hypocrite, the Emancipation was only for the South, what about those Northerners? Isn't he the one that said we should be shipped back to Africa?" "We've been chained for years, you think this declaration is going make real freedom for us?" It seems, for the moment at least, that there was celebration and thanksgiving, a sense of relief, a hope for the future that took another hundred years and more to realize.

We have a hard time celebrating America these days. Not because there are fewer things to be celebrated, but that our labels and differences and social media posts don't gain attention for gratitude. My label as a boomer and a white, privileged male automatically erases my value or my opinion in many circles. Was I ever black? Was I ever excluded from a house because of my race? Was I ever lynched for glancing at a white woman? No, and I grieve those things, but one thing I can say that many younger folks cannot is that I was a witness to nearly 70 years of the 160 years that have passed since the first Juneteenth. Yes, boys and girls, during my lifetime, I watched the unfolding of freedom for blacks in America. Now, I know many will have stopped reading there to slip down to the comments and rail about inbred racism, privilege, injustice, lingering prejudice, and how we haven't achieved true equality yet. Fine, but please don't leave gratitude in the dust of your own self-righteous indignity. 

In my lifetime, I knew my mother to have worked in the Arkansas cottonfields alongside immediate descendants of slaves. I lived near towns that still had the "No Coloreds After Dark" signs at the city limits. Communities that discovered some black kids had snuck into the public pool would have it drained and refilled. Movie theaters would only allow blacks to sit in the balcony, facilities and water fountains, and front doors were barred to blacks with signage that I cannot even quote here for historical purposes lest someone faint at the sight of the double g word. I watched the funeral of MLK on television at a friend's house whose mother was angry that her soap opera was interrupted. She quipped that James Earl Ray was arrested for "hunting 'coon out of season". Another friend sang a little ditty about a black man being seen by a white boy for the first time "bless my heart, bless my soul, I saw a walking Tootsie Roll". I was walking from school to the downtown library one day and started to step off the sidewalk to allow an old man the right of way out of respect, but the elderly black man stepped off for me because his history was to yield to any white, facing a beating had he not. I watched the news of riots and protests ending in violence in Chicago, Selma, Detroit, LA that resulted in many reforms from federal legislation that deeply affected my career in law enforcement. A house we bought in Missouri that was built in the 1960s had a deed restriction (since invalidated, of course) prohibiting its sale to a Negro. 

The casual disrespect and perfectly legal discrimination were pervasive during my youth. I must celebrate how far we've come without disregarding the work still remaining. Scripture says we should weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, but we are often stuck in a pattern of weeping with those who should also be weeping but they aren't sad enough and that makes us angry. We must make room for rejoicing. Happy Juneteenth, from an old white guy.