This past weekend, I was off on Friday due to Juneteenth. Shortly, after I woke up, my son joined me downstairs. As we spent some alone time, while he watched his YouTube videos, I meditated on what that day commemorated.

Two and A Half Years

In my history classes all the way through college, I knew about how the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1863, declared that slaves were free. What I didn’t know, until recently was about Juneteenth. Due to there being less Union presence in Texas, two and a half years later (1865), slaves in Galveston, Texas were among the last to be told about their freedom to which they were entitled. Two and a half years of free labor from those slaves. TWO AND A HALF YEARS. Let this resonate.

Remembering History

There are some people that mention “remembering history,” as a talking point. Do you know what? I agree that we should remember history. We should remember those two and a half years of free labor that was stolen from those slaves. If we remember history, we should remember how segregation expressed through Jim Crow laws replaced outright slavery. If we remember history, we should remember the various acts of civil disobedience preceding the various civil rights legislation that, in theory, protected more people. What unfortunately isn’t history is how there is still inequality that is surprisingly pervasive (at least to my evolving eyes). So yeah, let’s remember our history and let’s change what our history can be.

Equality For All

There are some people that believe everyone is equal. I would say that a better way of saying this is that everyone should be equal. When I was in school, I was led to believe or maybe I chose to believe that the bad stuff ended with the 1960s civil rights movement. However, in time, I moved past textbooks and what I was taught by listening to stories of people that have been affected by inequality. As I started to hear the same stories REPEAT, then I knew that things were much different than I believed.

Returning to Juneteenth, we commemorate a situation, where enslaved people were kept in an unequal situation for two and a half years and exploited. While their descendants and other POCs are supposed to be legally protected, there is more that we can do to make sure that these protections are uniformly applied and that these hidden systems involving racism and its connected inequality are dismantled. If we truly believe in equality for all, the most qualified people, whomever they may be, need to be considered without consideration for their skin color, their “ethnic” name or other factors that have no actual bearing on their true ability to do the work.

What Do We Do Now?

This might be the fundamental question. There are people that have directly experienced inequality. Also, there are those of us that may knowingly experienced anything. In this last case, the stories that we hear may seem unreal. This is not unlike what I wrote in “Empathy: Why We Need It Now More Than Ever,”

“Just because it’s not something that you’ve experienced or have known, doesn’t mean that it’s fake or not real.”

Speaking for myself and about myself, when discussing bringing myself up to speed to be a better ally, I have heard some horrendous accounts. In hearing these accounts, there have been times that I teared up for what some POCs experienced due to this existing, entrenched inequality. I can’t imagine the tears that were shed over decades and centuries of inequality and being unable to do ANYTHING about it. If, like me, you believe in our shared humanity and these things make you feel incredibly “uncomfortable,” then you will feel that these are things that NO HUMAN BEING should EVER experience.

So we celebrated Juneteenth, a commemoration of ending those two and a half years of exploitation. There was official exploitation preceding it and unofficial exploitation that followed. For those that don’t know about Juneteenth, hopefully you will learn more about it. In educating yourself, if you’re angry, GOOD. If we believe in equality for all and if we believe in remembering our history, then we need to learn from these painful lessons so that there will be no more exploitation.

We need to say,

NO MORE. NEVER AGAIN.

Be sure to follow me at The Jose Rodriguez (Facebook), The Jose Rodriguez (Twitter) or The Jose Rodriguez (Instagram).

Also, if you know someone that would enjoy or benefit from reading this post or others, please share with them.