We’re celebrating Juneteenth with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. Errin and Jamelle break down the history of the holiday and discuss the policy changes that need to happen to make America a truly equitable country.
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On today’s episode
Our host
Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of The Amendment newsletter. An award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience, Errin was previously a national writer on race for the Associated Press. She’s also worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Follow Errin on Instagram @emarvelous and X @errinhaines.
Today’s guest
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
Follow Jamelle Bouie on Instagram @jbouie and X @jbouie.
Episode transcript
The Amendment podcast transcripts are automatically generated by a third-party website and may contain typos or other errors. Please consider the official record for The Amendment podcast to be the audio publicly available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Jamelle Bouie:
There’s a way in which it’s almost like a little funny that the response to the 2020 protest was a new national holiday. And not anything…
Errin Haines:
I, we are in agreement. I’m here with you on this.
Jamelle:
I think that Juneteenth is worth celebrating for all Americans. Like the specific ask the specific that…
Errin:
This is how we got here. Right?
Jamelle:
Yeah. Right.
Errin:
Hey, y’all, welcome to The Amendment, a weekly conversation about gender, politics, and power from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network. I’m your host, Errin Haines. So happy Juneteenth to all who celebrate! And by the way, that should be you and all of your fellow Americans. Why? Because in 2021, the Biden administration officially made Juneteenth into a federal holiday. It was the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983. That’s a little over 150 years after the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in Texas. The event that we commemorate on June 19th, the day not only reminds us of the brutal legacy of slavery, but it’s also an opportunity for us to celebrate liberation. Juneteenth serves as a time for reflection on the ongoing struggles and achievements of the African American community. But was the signing of Juneteenth into a federal holiday a big step or was it just a symbolic gesture?
The declaration that arguably many Black Americans did not ask for came amid a racial reckoning when Black Americans were calling for things like passing criminal justice reform, or shoring up voting rights legislation that has still not made it through a deeply divided Congress. We know that history matters, but what more significant policy changes should follow that center African Americans? And what do those policies look like? To help me answer those questions on this holiday, I brought in my friend, the brilliant New York Times columnist, Jamelle Bouie, who has written extensively on how our country’s past shapes our present. Hi Jamelle, welcome to The Amendment.
Jamelle:
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Errin:
Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. So, you came to mind for this conversation on this holiday because 10 years ago you wrote an article in Slate called “The Black American Holiday Everyone should Celebrate but Doesn’t,” in that article, you were advocating for Juneteenth to become a national holiday, and this was back when most non-Black Americans probably didn’t even know what Juneteenth was. Probably some still don’t. So I just wanna start with that. I mean, back then, how did you explain what Juneteenth was to people who didn’t know anything about the holiday? Why was it important for you to bring this holiday to light and really advocate to make it a national holiday?
Jamelle:
So I think I explained it the way, more or less, the way that it’s understood these days, which is that it marks the holiday, it marks the day when enslaved Africans in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation and really learned of the end of the Civil War and thus their kind of nominal freedom at the very least. And my argument for celebrating it as national holiday, I think at the time, was simply that it’s important to celebrate emancipation. That’s a major and important moment in American history. I think if I were gonna make the argument again today, it would be not just that emancipation in itself is like this genuinely important moment in the country’s history that is worth celebrating for its own sake, but that when we think about what the modern United States is our conception of the modern United States, our conception of what the, and when I say that, what I mean is sort of like we are a singular nation, not simply like a collection of a bunch of quasi sovereign states, but we’re a single nation with a single federal government that attempts to represent us all.
Jamelle:
And our constitution secures and guarantees rights for all Americans wherever they live. That is a notion of American citizenship and the American nation that comes directly outta the Civil War. That comes specifically out of the long effort to abolish slavery, and really begins to come to fruition with emancipation and the constitutional constitutional amendments that are subsequently passed in the years following the war that are an attempt to make the promises of emancipation real. So, you know, if I’m making the argument today, it would be that July 4th celebrates our independence. But Juneteenth and the celebration of emancipation really celebrates the nation that we are. We aren’t the nation of 1776 or 1788 when the Constitution was ratified. We’re not that country anymore. We haven’t been for a long time, but we are the country that emerges after the Civil War.
Errin:
Yeah, I mean, that’s so interesting to think about Juneteenth being our national holiday about freedom, right? And freedom for all people. Not just the folks who the framers had in mind when they talked about freedom in our founding documents. That is such a good point and such a good case for Juneteenth as a national holiday that we should all participate in, that we should all celebrate. I wanna talk about what role specifically African American communities in Texas have played in really preserving and promoting the significance of Juneteenth over the decades, and why it’s important to remember that work today. I’m obviously thinking a lot about Opal Lee, as we are celebrating Juneteenth and just her unrelenting dedication to making sure that not only everybody in her community and in her home state understood that Juneteenth mattered, but really in helping to convince our president that this holiday matters.
Jamelle:
For most of the holiday’s history, it was actually like a very specifically, you know, a Texas holiday, like Black Americans in Texas celebrated, some in Louisiana and Mississippi, sort of like in that region of the South that it was quite local. And it doesn’t really, if I have my kind of history right, it doesn’t really begin to expand beyond there until during the Great Migration when you have Black Americans from Texas and Louisiana, Mississippi traveling to other, or migrating to other parts of the country, to Los Angeles, to Detroit, to Gary, Indiana, to Chicago, et cetera, et cetera. And so, it’s even as it becomes national in that way, with Black Americans moving throughout the country, it still is very much tied to like a specific community of Black Americans, and that you could call it diaspora of the descendants of enslaved Africans coming from this particular region of the country.
Jamelle:
And I think it’s important to recognize that, I think it’s important to recognize that not every single Black American has been aware of or knows this holiday. It’s not a part of every Black American community celebration. It is quite specific and local and this story of these enslaved Americans, learning of their freedom is one that’s been preserved by this community of Black Americans over, you know, the 150 – 160 years since those events took place. I think it’s really important to acknowledge, even as someone like myself makes the case for treating this as a more expansive holiday. And I’ll say, you know, this wouldn’t be the first time that a holiday that had its origins with specific communities of Black Americans becomes national. What we know is Memorial Day, you know this, Errin.
Errin:
I was just gonna say, Memorial Day started with us as well.
Jamelle:
Right. Memorial Day begins in South Carolina with formerly enslaved Black Americans marking the deaths of Union soldiers and it was called Decoration Day. And for a long time in the South, White Southerners did not celebrate Memorial Day. I think recognizing and honoring the origins, is important both for its own sake. Again, like it’s important to give credit to people for the work that they do, but also I think that doesn’t mean that this cannot be something that all Americans can share in.
Errin:
I really like the point that you’re making about, you know, Memorial Day’s really evolution to being a national holiday, something with its origins in the African American history and the African American community, but something that gradually came to be seen by all Americans is something worth celebrating as something that we could collectively celebrate. I actually was recently in Galveston, which is where the Juneteenth Museum is. That may not necessarily be a place where a lot of people may ever get to visit, may ever, you know, go to Galveston, much less the museum. And yet this story that radiates out of this community and then out of the state and now across the country, I mean, it actually makes me think, I think probably the first time I was aware of Juneteenth as a black person was in college. I had a friend from Texas that mentions this holiday, and it’s like, oh, okay. And then, I learned more about it that way. When do you remember even learning about Juneteenth or was it something that your family celebrated when you were growing up?
Jamelle:
No. We’re all from Florida and Georgia. So a bit outside of our cultural heritage. It’s interesting, you know, sometimes you like have facts in your mind or like people you know, but you can’t remember when you learned them,
Jamelle:
It’s sort of like, I can’t remember when I learned about Juneteenth. I wanna say it almost certainly. I grew up in a very kind of like Black history household. So I wanna say that, like, I just learned it through sort of like general osmosis, you know, of being, of talking about Black history all the time.
Errin:
It’s funny, like I said, and I can’t even remember who, who it was, like it was definitely somebody from Texas, who made me aware of this holiday. And then I asked my mom about it. And of course, somebody from Texas who had been a friend of hers when she was younger, put her onto Juneteenth. But it wasn’t like something that our family celebrated. Like my mom also understood it to very much be a thing that, that Black people in Texas knew about and celebrated. But it was their holiday. It wasn’t necessarily for the rest of Black America, much less for the rest of of the country. We all remembered in 2020 witnessing one of the biggest civil rights movements in our lifetimes with, you know, in the wake of the death of Black people, including Ahmoud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. And so in part, as a response to those uprisings, you get the Juneteenth federal holiday a year later. How do you see those two things in relationship to each other? And how do you think that decision really kind of impacted American understandings of Black history? You know, this is back when we were actually still reckoning with that kind of thing, right? And Black history was a thing that, that so many more Americans, were trying to become more aware of and learn more about. Right?
Jamelle:
You know, there’s a way in which it’s almost like a little funny that the response to the 2020 protest was a new national holiday. And not anything…
Errin:
I, we are in agreement. I’m here with you on this. Please, please continue.
Jamelle:
I mean, it really does, as much as I think it’s sort of like, I think that Juneteenth is worth celebrating for all Americans, like the specific, you know, ask…
Errin:
This is how we got here, right.
Jamelle:
Right. The specific ask of those protests wasn’t like a new national holiday. And I myself have always been a little like, reticent and ambivalent about the language of like racial reckoning. Because the ask of that wasn’t even sort of reckoned with the country’s racism. It was sort of like, we want specific things to happen for people to make their lives better. And so in the framework of racial reckoning, like it actually does make sense to create a Juneteenth national holiday and have it be an opportunity for education. And there’s been some reconstruction national monuments that have been marked in the years since, like, all that makes sense in the framework of education. But it doesn’t really make a lot of sense in the framework of, there are specific things we should do to improve the lives of Black people in particular, but sort of broadly speaking, most Americans.
Jamelle:
And so I’ve always been a little,like I said, ambivalent about this. Especially since, although there are civic organizations doing the kinds of remembrance and educational work, there really isn’t any broad effort to use Juneteenth as an occasion for education about Black history, about history of the Civil War. Like, I live an hour away from Civil War battlefield. I mean, if you live in Washington, DC you live an hour from Civil War battlefield. So it’s not like there’s not opportunities to highlight the history here. But to an extent, Juneteenth has become another occasion for a day off during the summer, which again…
Errin:
That’s exactly what I was gonna say. It’s not the federal holiday as a day off, as opposed to a day to actually reflect, to actually talk about our continued experiment of democracy and how the ongoing work of liberation and freedom. You know,how can we talk about that? How can we get there? What are the policies that maybe are still needing to be advanced to get to the full liberation of everybody in this country, and Black Americans in particular. But that is absolutely not what it is. It is a chance to maybe not go to work and to have that in the same kind of climate where you don’t get strengthened voting Rights Act and you don’t get any progress on criminal justice reform. I mean, it certainly kind of rang hollow in that moment for me. And then, you know, here we are three years later and we still don’t have a lot of those things, you know, that Black people were actually pushing for.
Jamelle:
In fairness, some of this is maybe just a function of it being a summer holiday, right? Like, it’s easier to be reflective on MLK day because it’s like in the middle of January.
Errin:
I dunno. I mean, hello. We have fireworks on the 4th of July, at least. And flags and celebrations at parades, even everywhere. Like what would it mean to actually publicly collectively celebrate Juneteenth as a country like we have yet to really see? And I’m not talking, I mean, I know the White House just recently had their Juneteenth celebration, but that is not something that the entire public is necessarily participating in.
Jamelle:
And I’ll say, I think part of the difficulty, or part of the challenge is that not all Americans have integrated slavery into their understanding of sort of national identity, if that makes any sense. Right?
Errin:
Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.
Jamelle:
I think to a large extent, a lot of Americans, especially those who are more recent arrivals. And when I say recent arrivals, I don’t just mean like immigration post 1965, I mean Americans whose families immigrated here in the 1910s, 1920s. They don’t see themselves as connected to slavery you often hear, right? Like in response to, in conversations about reparations or anything like that. You’ll hear, well, my family wasn’t here during then, so what does it have to do with me kind of thing. At the same time, most Americans will claim 1776, and they’ll claim 1787, they’ll claim George Washington and the Continental Army, and…
Errin:
Well, and why not, right? Because that’s part of our, the myths of our origin story, right? I mean, not, not that those things didn’t happen, but it’s part, they become mythologized. And romanticized in a way that feels good to us. That’s the part of our past that feels good. And slavery obviously does not feel good.
Jamelle:
Slavery does not feel good. The flip side of slavery not really being integrated into, I think a lot of Americans understanding of the country is that the struggle against slavery isn’t either. And so, you know, people know Lincoln and they know Emancipation Proclamation, but there’s like this more, this longer and more interesting story to tell about. Because several generations of Americans – by no means a majority, like a quite a small minority – but nonetheless, several generations of Americans, Black and White struggling against slavery, and eventually that struggle having real consequences for the entire nation. And if we like buy the idea of America as it exists today is a product of the Civil War and not really a product of the founding. Then America as it exists today is part of the afterlife of the abolitionist movement. And that’s something that people should celebrate. It should be part of, you should, like when you, if you’re thinking of reasons to be proud to be an American, this should be one of the things you should be proud of. But because you think, I think precisely because slavery itself is just sort of like shunted to the side and like said, this is a thing that Black people care about, but the rest of us don’t have to. That means that other story doesn’t get told either. And there’s not, there’s no really rituals around it. There’s no really rituals around the symbols and the ideas and everything.
Errin:
And also, I mean, look I’m even just thinking about the abolition movement and how it was treated in some corners of our country even then, right? I mean, it was to the extent that there were White people involved in the abolition movement, folks who were feeling like, why are these people scolding us? You know, for this practice of, so the hostility towards White people in the abolition movement is that something that our country has moved past, can move past? Can we embrace these folks as to your point among the patriots who helped to really get us to the more perfect union that the framers had in mind, but for people that they did not necessarily have in mind?
Jamelle:
We don’t think of, when you say founders, people think Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, et cetera, they don’t think William Lloyd Garrison orFrederick Douglass or, you know, Harriet Beecher Stowe right? They don’t think any of these people, even though they’re names that most people learn, but they don’t think about them in that way.
Errin:
But we should, but we should.
Jamelle:
We should. Yeah.
Jamelle:
And ideally, Juneteenth could become an opportunity for thinking about.
Errin:
Yes, a vehicle for that. Well folks at home may not be able to see this, but I am in fact wearing a Juneteenth shirt. It is not from Target. However, it is… Shout out to Black Market Vintage, which made these amazing shirts that I love. But, uh, we do have to talk about Juneteenth as a national holiday means that it has also been commercialized. And I wanna talk about the implications of this commercialization for the African American community. I mean, what do you think about that?
Jamelle:
I mean, part of me, I’m always, when I see stuff like that, I’m always sort of like, yeah this is America. We commercialize everything. And I see it as sort of like, I’ll put it this way, if no one were trying to make a few stacks off of Juneteenth, I think that might actually be a little more worrisome, if you see what I’m saying. Sort of, it just has no impact whatsoever. But the fact that, what was it last year or two years ago, like Walmart was selling like a Juneteenth red velvet ice cream. Like that’s in addition to being very funny…
Errin:
Forgot about that. I forgot about the Walmart red velvet Juneteenth flavor. Is that still a thing?
Jamelle:
That to me, is a sign at least it’s part of the mainstream at this point, that people are trying to make money, trying to sell to an audience.
Errin:
Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean it is a marker that the holiday has gone mainstream.
Jamelle:
All holidays in this country are commercialized. That doesn’t mean that those of us who would think that there are more important messages here shouldn’t speak up and say what the messages are. And that does not mean that those of us who think that, to the extent that Juneteenth the national holiday is a response to 2020, those of us who are like, eh, I don’t know about that, should be clear why we’re ambivalent about that. And say, you know what ought to have come out of the 2020 protest was not just commitments to criminal justice reform and voting rights, but commitments to building a more robust and fair economy that can provide Black Americans and all Americans with opportunity, commitments to strengthening the social safety net and providing the kinds of resources and such that all Americans, but especially many Black Americans, need to be able to thrive in this country.
Jamelle:
That to me, is the ask of 2020. That, to me, is maybe some of the actionable ideas that can come out of Juneteenth. Because of course the story of emancipation is not just the story of congratulations, you’re free, but also the story of Black Americans trying to realize that freedom in real and concrete ways and making demands on the federal government for the things that they need to succeed. Then it was 40 acres and a mule, it was land. Now it is the equivalent of land, like various resources and opportunities and access to capital and access to education that can help people thrive.
Errin:
Yeah. In many ways, Juneteenth, was the beginning of the path to full citizenship for us, truly full citizenship and participation, full and equal participation in this democracy.
Jamelle:
There is no multiracial United States of equals, or as much as we can be equals without the contributions of formerly enslaved Americans and their descendants, right. Full stop. Like the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship exists because free Blacks in the Antebellum America were adamant that they were citizens of the United States, that they did not belong anywhere else, that this was their country as well. And it’s through birthright citizenship that subsequent generations of immigrants to this country can lay a claim on this country through their children and grandchildren and so on and so forth. And so, if we think of Juneteenth as the beginning of a struggle for freedom, it’s a struggle for freedom that isn’t just about Black people. It’s ultimately about every American who calls this place home and every person who wants to call this place home, right? It’s the struggles of Black Americans to open the door to this being a much more inclusive country than it was ever envisioned.
Errin:
As I hear you really kind of framing how, you know, what this holiday means to you, I wonder, it sounds like knowing what you know now, maybe you might make some amendments to that 2014 Slate article. Maybe it’s time for an updated Juneteenth column. I’m your editor now. Okay. Surprise! I mean, how would you kind of, you know, we’re on the amendment, so how would you maybe amend that case today? Are there any kind of asterisks that you would include?
Jamelle:
Sure. I think the big thing is I would like straightforwardly – as we’ve been doing in our conversation here – I would straightforwardly acknowledge the weird circumstances of getting a Juneteenth national holiday. And to be like, yeah, this isn’t something that solves problems.
Errin:
Or cured racism. That part.
Jamelle:
It doesn’t cure racism. It doesn’t do any of that. It doesn’t do any of that. But what it does do is, provide again opportunities for those of us who think that the history of this country should be taken much more seriously by more people in that there are, there are moments that we should look toward too, that aren’t just the 1780s or like the 1940s. Like those are the two big ones, right? Sort of like, it’s either the founding or World War II, and we kind of skip over and the Civil War is bad. And of course people look at sort of skeptical eyes or people who like are a little too into the Confederacy. But what that war was about, what that moment was about doesn’t get as much play in our contemporary discourse.
Errin:
Yeah. I mean, well, PS we don’t even have a shared set of facts of around what that war was about.
Jamelle:
Exactly .And so that’s, I think that’s the main amendment. It would be sort of the update I would do, which is say, circumstances to this are weird. Nonetheless, this is still valuable for these reasons. And I would make a broader case for people to take more interest in the Civil War and its aftermath for these reasons. Because I really do think that is the moment that makes the United States. I would encourage people if they visit Washington DC to go to the Lincoln Memorial and not to read the Gettysburg Address. The Gettysburg address is an important piece of American rhetoric. But every time I go to the Lincoln Memorial, and I go every time I go to DC these days, ’cause I like it, I like the space.
Jamelle:
There are always tons of people reading the Gettysburg Address and there’s no one reading the other side, which is Lincoln’s second inaugural, which is much more in line with what we’ve been talking about. In Lincoln’s second inaugural, he says, this war is because of slavery. This war that we are experiencing is the fruit of of our labor as people who tolerated this in our country. And we have to pay a debt. And that debt, however long it takes us to pay that debt, however painful it is, it will be just, we will be doing the thing we must do. I think that’s a message that’s important to hear. And it’s, it’s always been interesting to me that people don’t wanna read that.
Errin:
He went there, he went there, right? And what you’re talking about, if you would do an amendment is you going there? And not even maybe realizing at the time that we needed to go there, that certain things maybe needed to be explicitly said for people. But I wanna circle back on something else that you were saying. I mean, we we’re talking about this coming out of a response to the racial reckoning from 2020. And, and what I hope this holiday didn’t do for people was exactly to what we were saying a minute ago. Like, the Juneteenth did not cure racism, right? That was not, that should not be where people kind of stop reckoning. But four years later, it does feel to me in a lot of ways the country has done reckoning. So I wanna think about Juneteenth in a 2024 context, three years after the holiday, but also as we head into November as we continue to just remain a very racially polarized, politically polarized country. How would you kind of think about these past four years in the Black Lives Matter era? We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of Ferguson. Have we seen material changes? Are we in the same spot that we were in before? Are we in a worse spot around this?
Jamelle:
On criminal justice reform and voting rights specifically, there has not been big signature legislation. And I think that is the kind of thing that leads people to say, well, there has not really been any progress. I think it’s important to recognize that so much of the work that gets done on both these issues does happen through executive branch enforcement, right? It happens through the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department. It happens through other executive branch agencies, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, prioritizing and dealing with racial inequality, dealing with discrimination, these sorts of things. And so on those fronts right there, there’s been work done. Like the executive branch being in the hands of people who think it should do the job it was created to do has real impact on people’s day-to-day lives from, again prosecuting housing and job discrimination, which is still quite widespread to investigating police departments and such pattern and practice investigations.
Jamelle:
You know, as both us people who follow this stuff for a living like this to me is progress. But I also understand that because there’s no big signature legislation, it does not seem like anything really has happened.
Errin:
We’ll be right back.
Errin:
You know, another thing that occurs to me about you, just thinking back four years ago, as we’re covering now another presidential election cycle. Four years ago, reparations was on the table, right? Like, we were having serious conversations about reparations in a national presidential campaign climate. AndI don’t feel like that’s the case anymore. What happened to that conversation? Why do you think that that conversation is off the table now? And do we need to bring it back? Should conversations around reparations be happening again? I’m thinking we got a debate coming up. I don’t think we’re gonna get a question about reparations on the debate stage.
Jamelle:
Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean, my sense is that conversations over reparations are one of those things that people pursue when they feel that the space is open to it and they back off when it seems that it might not be right. So in the moment of these protests, it seems like expansive space for talking about something like reparations, in a moment like 2024, where it does seem as if lots of teetering on balance, it’s probably not gonna show up. I’ve always had this view that the funny thing about reparations is that the kind of United States that would pursue earnestly a program for reparations might be the kinda United States that doesn’t need them, if that makes any sense. Like the kind of political environment you would have in which the state is willing to like pay for, if not slavery or the afterlife of slavery then at least sort of reparations for Jim Crow, for example.
Jamelle:
In that world, I imagine that that’s a world where there is already kind of like a robust and generous social safety net where there already is robust protection for voting rights or already robust criminal justice reform. Right? It’s sort of like that’s the kind of political energy you would need to build reparations, build the kind of energy for reparations. And so in my mind, I’ve always – I wouldn’t say always – but I’ve come to see reparations as being a lodestar in the sense that you’re trying to create the world where that kind of thing really is possible. And the kind of world you’ve created is one in which so many of the material challenges are already being overcome, if that makes sense.
Errin:
Yeah. That does make sense. You know what I am also thinking about, and this I think also applies in a Juneteenth context. You’ve had, like I said, Opal Lee pushing for so long to get the rest of the country to care about Juneteenth. You know, Opal Lee is certainly somebody who is up in age now, she’s not gonna be here honestly for too many more Juneteenth right there, there are fewer Juneteenths ahead of her than there are behind her. So what does it mean to not really have champions of issues like these on the frontline, who picks up reparations after this? I don’t know.
Jamelle:
Right. That gets to something that is just a fact of living in a democratic society, which is that it ultimately has to be all of us who take an interest in this, all of us who have a commitment to it, it has to be kind of all of our responsibility. And something that we pressure certainly elect representatives. We elect people who will promise to make this an issue. And we continue to push for a world where these things can get a serious hearing. I’m thinking about in Oklahoma yesterday. The Oklahoma Supreme Court basically like slammed the lid on reparations for the Tulsa massacre of 1921. For which there were still two survivors. So two people who were children are still living. And the state of Oklahoma was making the argument that, “Hey, you know, it’s really terrible what happened, but it was a long time ago.” Which really is the strategy, right? Like you kind of just wait it out, and then once it gets to be a while, you say, well, you know, who’s to say?
Errin:
And yet you had these two people who were children who were there, they were to say. They were to say, and they tried to say.
Jamelle:
For me what that illustrates to kinda loop back around if one, it illustrates that part of any project for racial justice is gonna take place in a broader environment in which people are thinking of, are willing to use the state in ways sort of like ameliorate suffering and ameliorate injustice. The modern civil rights movement that emerges at Montgomery. It’s not an accident that it happens in the context of the New Deal Order when people can look at the state as a thing that can assist people. And isn’t just hands off.
Errin:
An institution for redress. Right.
Jamelle:
Absolutely. You know, you look at modern Oklahoma, you get Oklahoma politics the last 10 years, not a place people are looking to the state for redress. Not a place that is hospitable to anything like claims about rights, claims about justice. And I think that when you’re looking to the future, whether it’s Juneteenth or reparations or any kind of quest for racial justice, I think at the front of your mind has to be how do we build coalitions? How do we build a political environment where we understand the national government Congress to be a place for redress, a place that we don’t just owe obligations to it, it owes things to us as well.
Errin:
To your point, that’s not yet the country that we have now. We are still very much a country of contradictions, which is why we can have a Juneteenth holiday in the same moment that you have affirmative action being overturned. You know what I mean? So obviously that was, we knew then that higher education was only the beginning of that action. What do you make of the backlash to, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which were a huge part of the racial reckoning, and now seem to be a huge target in our political culture wars as we head into this election?
Jamelle:
I mean, this is another place where I’m very ambivalent. Diversity, equity, you have to laugh. Inclusion, you have to laugh. Diversity, equity and inclusion efforts don’t really deal with material problems facing many Black Americans. It’s sort of like, what does that have to say? Not just the housing discrimination, but to the fact that in many places where Black Americans live, housing is incredibly unaffordable and there isn’t very much of it to begin with. What does that have to say to criminal justice reform? Like all the material things. So it’s like, okay in response to all of this fervor you’re gonna hire some people who will talk about ways to better hire people. I guess that’s okay.
Jamelle:
I think diversity is good. I think inclusion is good. And so to the extent that private corporations and companies and universities wanna pursue that, I’m not gonna say that that’s a bad thing. But it certainly is not like a solution to anything. On the flip side though, the backlash to DEI very much is not just about those programs, but about the broader notion of integration at all. It’s about the inclusion of Black people and anything. It’s about a state that works to the advantage or sees racial inequality as a problem to solve to begin with. So DEI doesn’t fix anything really, but anti DEI is certainly symptomatic of efforts that will make it difficult to fix things, right?
Errin:
Yeah. The DEI as a verb, as opposed to just a symbol or acronym was the thing that became, you know, a bridge too far for folks who certainly do not want to see diversity, equity, and inclusion as things that are happening in this country.
Jamelle:
That’s right.
Errin:
Yeah. And there has been backlash to policies that lift Black communities. I’m also thinking about the Fearless Fund decision that happened recently, blocked from giving grants only to Black women. I mean, you’re talking about kind of the threat of anti DEI, I mean, do you feel like our progress is going backwards since 2020? And, and how do we combat that? If you think so?
Jamelle:
Yeah, I think there is a serious risk of us going backwards because this conservative legal movement is kind of weaponizing civil rights laws to basically create a situation where neither the state nor really private actors can address racial inequality directly. I mean that the Fearless Fund decision is disturbing for that reason, right? Because the majority on that panel, the two judges who’ve supported the preliminary injunction did so on the basis of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was passed specifically to deal with like anti-Black discrimination in the economic world, in the economic realm, right? And so it’s sort of like,it’s like legitimately crazy to say that a law passed to deal specifically with discrimination against Black Americans in the making of contracts means, because Black Americans are being discriminated against and trying to get work means that Black Americans today cannot take actions to deal with discrimination in the world or realm of economic life.
Jamelle:
And so to the extent that you have this conservative legal movement that is like weaponizing, you know, 1866 law, the 14th amendment, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to make it illegal to address racial inequality, that is like the real danger of moving backwards. And the only solution to that really is just a full on fight in politics, right? There’s a reason that this is happening through the law and not on the battleground of elections, not on the field of electoral politics. Because I think if people knew what was happening, they would like have a very negative reaction. And so I think that’s obviously fighting a legal battle, but also fighting a political battle and making it known that these are the political stakes, I think is important.
Errin:
Yeah. I agree with you. I also realize that we are not going to solve all of those problems by this Juneteenth. So I wonder, I’m spending my Juneteenth actually in conversation with an artist whose work I really admire, that that really focuses on themes of memory and legacy and reconstructing, you know, narratives, especially, uh, around our history and culture. What are you planning on doing for Juneteenth?
Jamelle:
Well we will probably do some Black history stuff here at home. We are a Black history household, very much. And I know I have to make a trip up to Philadelphia, so I’ll be doing some, Black history sightseeing in Philadelphia, I think.
Errin:
I have many recommendations for you on that note, so yes, let me know and I got you.
Jamelle:
I will. But otherwise, Juneteenth at our household is a very educational thing, so we have lots of, I mean, I have like my bookshelf behind me, lots of books on history of slavery and African American history, and then we have stuff like that for the kids as well. So we’ll be doing lots of history and education.
Errin:
Well look at that. Your kids are gonna know about Juneteenth way before you did. That’s progress, I would say, if nothing else.
Jamelle:
Yes. Yes.
Errin:
Well, Jamelle, thanks for joining The Amendment and thanks for celebrating Juneteenth with me this year.
Jamelle:
Thank you so much for having me.
Errin:
So one last thing before we wrap this episode. The 19th is having a little free get together on July the5th in New Orleans. So please join us and me, uh, for a few hours of brunch conversations and solutions sessions focused on building healthy communities in the face of climate change. Did I mention that this is gonna be a great stop for locals or anybody that’s in town for Essence Fest. Get more information and register today at 19thnews.org/neworleans, and I hope to see all of you there.
The Amendment is a co-production of The 19th News and Wonder Media Network. It is executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, Terri Rupar and Faith Smith. Wonder Media Network’s head of development is Emily Rudder. Julia B. Chan is The 19th’s editor-in-chief. The Amendment is edited by Jenny Kaplan, Grace Lynch, and Emily Rudder, and it is produced by Adesuwa Agbonile, Grace Lynch, Brittany Martinez and Taylor Williamson with production assistance from Luci Jones. And post-production support from Julie Bogan, Victoria Clark, Lance Dixon, and Wynton Wong.
