Juneteenth: The Independence Day America Ignored

[00:00:01]Hello damnation.

[00:00:03]I want to welcome you to a special edition Juneteenth edition of the Danielle Moody show. I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to record a video today. Um, but I decided that I have a lot of feelings about today's holiday. I have a lot of feelings about where America is and I thought that we could all use a bit of a history lesson as well as some time to reflect.

[00:00:29]Welcome to the special Juneteenth edition of the Danielle Moody show, dear friends. Let's get into it.

[00:00:45]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Hello, hello damnation and welcome to this special Juneteenth edition of the Danielle Moody show. Like I said at the top, I wasn't sure if I was going to record today because I wanted to take fully a day of rest. But as I woke up today, I was filled with a lot of conflicting feelings about Juneteenth and um, and I wanted to share them with you. And I wanted to share them with you because I think that often times we get these federal holidays and we lose the significance or the reasoning behind the holidays to begin with. And I think particularly at a time when we have white nationalist white that are in the White House, that are controlling all branches of our government that think that black people should not uh have power, should not have presence, should not have purpose inside of our society other than to be servants uh to the white and the wealthy. I think that it's really important as the country has the day off um to really reflect on the reason for Juneteenth and the history and the legacy of Juneteenth.

[00:02:28]And I want to share that with you. And why am I conflicted? And I'm going to be really honest and it's probably going to hurt some people's feelings.

[00:02:37]I don't think that white people should have off for Juneteenth. I really don't.

[00:02:41]I think that it should be a day of activation and activism. It should be a day that you spend inside of a library where you are learning about the history that has been denied not just to you, but to black Americans, to black people >> [snorts] >> as well.

[00:02:58]And I think that today for white America should be a day of learning and reflection and deep deep understanding.

[00:03:06]Because I think that a lot of the misunderstanding in our country is purposeful.

[00:03:13]The gaslighting, the hiding, the erasure, all of it is purposeful to maintain the structure of white supremacy.

[00:03:24]And when we think about even the mundane of celebrating holidays we don't ask ourselves truly, why is the 4th of July considered the day of independence when all peoples in this country were not free? Why is that the day that has been lifted up since the founding of this country as some example of freedom and liberty and for all. Like I was sitting recently and watching commercials on TV and, you know, as they're like preparing you know, preparing for like the car dealerships and [ __ ] Old Navy and like different retail companies to make money, right, on the 4th of July holiday.

[00:04:13]And that was one of the reasons why I never felt like Juneteenth needed to be a federal holiday because it was just going to be forgotten. It was just going to be another mode, another cog for capitalism to extract, right, from more people.

[00:04:27]And so for me, right, for black people this is either a day of celebration or a day of rest and for white people it should be a day of deep learning.

[00:04:36]It should be a day that you do visit your local library, that you visit a second-hand bookstore, that you sit, right, and you pick up the works of black authors and you understand who America is outside of your prism of privilege, right, and whether or not people understand like, oh, I don't have any privilege, my family has worked really hard. Sure, okay, right? Yes, and your family has had generational wealth.

[00:05:07]And what does that look like? That looks like homes that have been passed down.

[00:05:10]That looks like trusts that have been given over. That looks like businesses that have been passed down. And folks will say, well, black people have had the same in limited quantity because we have been denied the ability to buy homes through redlining, to start businesses through uh denials of loans.

[00:05:30]And so the amount of wealth that black people should have had from reconstruction onward has been systematically denied not only through Jim Crow, but through neo-Jim Crow tactics that have always denied black people their rightful reparations from the domestic terrorism that we continue to suffer at the hands of.

[00:05:55]And so for me, the Juneteenth holiday is a time of deep reflection, of gratitude to my ancestors for even being able to survive, right? To survive the trauma that is America.

[00:06:14]And then I give deep honor to those that chose the sea.

[00:06:19]That chose to jump overboard rather than land in a country that they did not know, that they would never understand, and just through the beginning of being shackled at the bottom of a boat to know that the fate that awaited them wasn't going to be much better than what they were experiencing at that moment.

[00:06:41]And so they chose they chose death as opposed to life under oppression.

[00:06:50]And so I lift up those brave beautiful souls that lay at the bottom of our sea.

[00:06:59]You know, I'll tell you this that a couple of months ago, at the end of last year, so 6 months ago or so, when I traveled to Kenya, it was my first time traveling to the continent of Africa.

[00:07:16]And I was on the plane and it was super quiet. It's a long, long flight, about 15 hours.

[00:07:25]And you know, it was that time of the flight where all of the lights are off, and I was reading my book, Skyful of Elephants, um written by the author uh Sibylle Campbell, which is an extraordinary book that I highly recommend. Um and I highly recommend it because it is a sci-fi fictional story um where all of the white people disappear into the sea.

[00:07:56]And the story unfolds with what happens to the world and what happens to those that are left behind. Right? To reconfigure society.

[00:08:07]And I was reading this book while traveling over the Atlantic Ocean realizing that I had never traveled in the direction of the Atlantic slave trade before.

[00:08:26]Like going to the continent like that route I'd never taken before.

[00:08:34]And in the darkness of the plane with only my light hovering over my book, I started to cry.

[00:08:43]Because I could feel in my spirit that we were flying over a massive cemetery.

[00:08:56]And all of the lives that either chose to go overboard or were just disposed of because they died during the middle passage.

[00:09:12]It was like my heart was breaking open in that moment for all of the pain and the deep suffering and the trauma that we carry in our DNA.

[00:09:25]Right?

[00:09:27]And at different points and different moments it comes to the surface. And for me in that moment it was coming to the surface like my God, my existence.

[00:09:40]I am here because of the enslaved Africans that through out time and different portals survived.

[00:09:53]And survived through things that I can't even wrap my brain around.

[00:10:03]The pain and the torture and just the memory that is passed down through our DNA. And so I wept. I wept for those that are laying at the bottom of the sea. I weep for those that are laying in mass graves in this country. I weep for the little one-year-old boy that was just murdered by police officers.

[00:10:28]I weep constantly for a country that chooses racism over everything else.

[00:10:38]And so for me today when I sit with my thoughts on Juneteenth it is thoughts that are mixed with a lot of sadness and grief and immense joy.

[00:10:57]Because yesterday was the opening of President Obama's presidential library.

[00:11:06]And this will be a marker, a place for black people to be able to see the heights that we reached even if but for a blip in America's 250 years.

[00:11:27]It is significant and it matters.

[00:11:30]It matters to name a thing and it matters to honor.

[00:11:35]To honor those that would never see this day.

[00:11:40]And to also grieve where we are. How far we came. And how quickly we rolled back.

[00:11:48]The hands of time.

[00:11:51]But it is holding on to those memories, understanding our history. That allows us the hope and the ability to be able to project into the future the kind of world that we want to live in. But we can't understand and create that world without a foundation based in truth.

[00:12:12]And history.

[00:12:13]So.

[00:12:15]I offer you this.

[00:12:17]The historical legacy.

[00:12:19]Of Juneteenth.

[00:12:22]Freedom's Eve and watch night service.

[00:12:26]On Freedom's Eve or the eve of January 1st, 1863.

[00:12:31]The first watch night services took place. On that night enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country.

[00:12:41]Waiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. At the stroke of midnight prayers were answered as all enslaved people in Confederate states were declared legally free.

[00:12:53]Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south. Reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation spreading the news of freedom in Confederate states.

[00:13:05]Only through the 13th Amendment did emancipation end slavery through the United States.

[00:13:13]The post emancipation period known as reconstruction 1865 to 1877 marked an era of great hope, uncertainty and struggle for the nation as a whole.

[00:13:24]Formally enslaved people immediately sought to reunify families, establish schools, run for political office, push radical legislation, and even sue slave hold holders for compensation.

[00:13:36]Given the 200-plus years of enslavement, such changes were nothing short of amazing.

[00:13:43]Not even a generation out of slavery, African Americans were inspired and empowered to transform their lives and their country.

[00:13:52]Juneteenth marks our country's second Independence Day. Although it has long been celebrated in the African-American community, this monumental event remains largely unknown to most Americans.

[00:14:06]The historical legacy of Juneteenth shows the value of never giving up hope in uncertain times.

[00:14:12]The National Museum of African-American History and Culture is a community space where the spirit of hope lives on. A place where historical events like Juneteenth are shared and new stories with equal urgency are told.

[00:14:27]You see, this incredible museum, which the Trump administration at the start of their second term, made it their goal to deconstruct.

[00:14:44]Because they didn't want white people to feel bad about themselves, to give away pieces of history back to its rightful owners, as to not tell the story of America's marriage to racism.

[00:15:01]Because, you see, the thing about white nationalists is that they understand the importance and power of history, of print, of storytelling.

[00:15:12]Because that is how people begin to know. That is how hearts and minds are changed. And if you can deny that history, if you can deny that truth, if you can replace it with something that is more palpable, something that is more easy to bear, then you never have to reckon with anything. You never have to have accountability. You never have to transform.

[00:15:37]You just get to continue moving along.

[00:15:42]And so that is the power that I say in this day and what white people should organize themselves to do.

[00:15:52]A reading.

[00:15:54]Right? Of notable works by black revolutionaries in this country.

[00:16:01]Read the documentation of the formally enslaved, so that you can really understand the practice of slavery and this lie of the benevolent slave master.

[00:16:13]That you can understand this history of feeding black babies to alligators as bait, to creating stud sheds and forcing men and women to have sex in order to create your line of workers until they were exhausted and dead.

[00:16:38]Understand the brutality.

[00:16:41]And then ask yourselves, how is it that reparations is not even a topic that we can discuss? That we our Congress won't even go so far as to pass simple policy to allow there to be a study done.

[00:16:58]Because that's how fearful they are of the truth. Because if they had to do a tally for what was owed black people, they're afraid that then they would create the conditions for a myriad of lawsuits. Because we, black people, are the only people in this country that never received reparations after centuries of cruelty, violence, torture, murder, and consistent terrorism.

[00:17:34]So, I say to my white listeners today, and every day, create a syllabus for yourselves.

[00:17:47]Stop looking for other people to direct you, to make you feel good for wanting to be better.

[00:17:55]Because the goodness that you should feel is just in the doing, in the activation, and in the encouragement that you create inside of your communities to instill that same sense of curiosity in those around you.

[00:18:16]Understanding history isn't about understanding shame.

[00:18:22]It's about recognizing how far we have come and how far we still have yet to go.

[00:18:29]It's about reconciling with who we actually want to be. And how do you do that when you have no idea who you actually are?

[00:18:38]We continue to get caught up in this thought of this is not who we are, saying that and not actually having any foundational understanding of this country and what it's capable of.

[00:18:56]Both in the box of evil and also in the box of good.

[00:19:05]But you can't imagine a new future, a new society, if you don't know from whence you came.

[00:19:14]And so I close out today with the incredible words of Toni Morrison.

[00:19:23]And this was in her interview. This is a splicing. Part of it comes from her time being interviewed on The Colbert Report and then in earlier interviews.

[00:19:37]And it is a mashup Toni Morrison's powerful words on racism.

[00:19:43]Take a listen.

[00:19:45]>> There is no such thing as race.

[00:19:48]None.

[00:19:49]>> Really?

[00:19:50]>> There's just a human race, scientifically >> Mhm.

[00:19:52]>> anthropologically.

[00:19:54]Racism is a construct, a social construct. And it has benefits.

[00:20:00]It has money can be made off of it. And people who don't like themselves can feel better because of it. It can describe certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading. So it has a social function, racism.

[00:20:20]But race can only be defined as a human being.

[00:20:27]If the racist white person, I don't mean the person who is examining his consciousness and so on, doesn't understand that he or she is also a race, it's also constructed, it's also made, and it also has some kind of serviceability. But when you take it away, I take your race away, and there you are, all strung out, and all you got is your little self. And what is that?

[00:20:55]What are you without racism?

[00:20:57]Are you any good?

[00:20:59]Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself? If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And my feeling is, white people have a very, very serious problem.

[00:21:16]And they should start thinking about what they can do about it.

[00:21:21]Take me out of it.

[00:21:23]>> You don't think you will ever change and write books that incorporate what white lives into them substantially?

[00:21:30]>> I have done.

[00:21:32]>> Mhm.

[00:21:33]In a substantial way?

[00:21:34]>> You can't understand how powerfully racist that question is, can you?

[00:21:39]Cuz you could never ask a white author, "When are you going to write about black people?"

[00:21:46]Whether he did or not, or she did or not.

[00:21:48]>> Mhm.

[00:21:49]>> Even the inquiry comes from a position of being in the center and being used to being in the center, being used to being in the center.

[00:22:00]>> Mhm.

[00:22:03]>> [sighs and snorts] >> Powerful words. Powerful words.

[00:22:07]And a lot to reflect on consistently.

[00:22:13]I sit with that often.

[00:22:17]What Toni Morrison said about racism and "Are you any good if you take racism away?

[00:22:25]If you can only be powerful if somebody else is on their knees, what does that say about you?"

[00:22:34]And that is the question that white people have never asked themselves about the structure and the formation that provides the privilege and the cover that they never have to think about anybody else's experience outside of their own.

[00:22:58]So, when you see a black president or some black people in a commercial, or people doing well, or enjoying themselves, always having to put whiteness in the center.

[00:23:13]Because they can't imagine a world that they are not centered in.

[00:23:19]And those were the worlds that Toni Morrison created.

[00:23:23]So, it isn't just two holidays, two Independence Days that we have in this country. We have two alternate realities.

[00:23:35]And the question that I always ask is, when will white America become curious enough, and not to insert themselves, but curious enough to understand themselves.

[00:23:50]And why they needed racism in the first place.

[00:23:54]Why they needed, as James Baldwin said, to concoct and create the caricature of the N-word.

[00:24:04]What type of people require that continued inundation of hatred in order to feel good, superior. And that's the examination that needs to be done.

[00:24:24]Those are the questions that need to be asked.

[00:24:30]It isn't about shame.

[00:24:33]It is about deep understanding because you want to be different. You want to be better. Because if each of us took on that responsibility, then we could begin the real work of imagining new and better worlds, instead of settling for the status quo, instead of settling for this idea that racism is just, well, it's just a part of us. It's not an appendage that can't be moved.

[00:25:03]And so I ask you all on this Juneteenth to not just move about your day with carefree abandon but to actually reflect on sit with and begin a consistent practice of questioning of learning and unlearning who this country is and how you want to participate now and what kind of legacy you want to leave behind.

[00:25:45]That is it for me today, dear friends, on this special edition of the Danielle Moody show.

[00:25:51]I hope that you take heed to what I've said. I hope that you pick up a book today or several.

[00:26:00]Create a syllabus for yourself.

[00:26:03]Go lay in a park.

[00:26:06]Look up and think.

[00:26:09]Because it's that critical thinking that fascism is trying to desperately deny.

[00:26:15]And this idea that we don't ever have to strive to be better than we are.

[00:26:21]And we should.

[00:26:24]As always, dear friends, power to the people and to all the people power. Get woke, stay woke, stay sane and in these extraordinarily dangerous times, dear friends, do stay safe. I will see you back here on Monday.

[00:26:42]Be well.