There were, one supposes, some practical reasons that some enslaved Black people from Texas had to wait three years after passage of the Emancipation Proclamation to realize they were free.
Odd as it may seem now, back in 1862, when Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation was passed, Texas was the most remote outpost in the Confederacy. Enforcement of the new edict depended largely on the advancement of Union troops across the south. It wasn’t until June 1865, two months after the end of the Civil War, that enough troops arrived in the Lone Star State to enforce the edict. The proclamation by Gen. Gordon Granger occurred on June 19 of that year, and it is seen as the day institutional slavery truly ended.
That is the origin of the Juneteenth celebration, which was declared a federal holiday last week. Each June 19, Black people in the U.S. celebrate the day the last of the slaves in the Confederacy were officially freed. Along with their freedom, they celebrate their culture and their traditions just as fervently. We have seen several such celebrations in this area over the weekend.
It would have been nice if June 19, 1865, had been the last time that Black people faced this kind of uncertainty and hostility about their freedoms, but we all know that’s not true. From June 19, 1865, until this very second, there are Black men and women in the United States of America who have been, and are, enslaved — if not literally then very definitely figuratively.
Here we are all these years later, and I’m sure a lot of us who aren’t people of color look around and declare, “gee, haven’t we made progress!” That seems to be one of the two fallback responses by white people when confronted with the sins of the past. The other is “well, it’s not my fault. I didn’t do it,” which is the knee-jerk reaction whenever the word “reparations” comes up.
I would consider myself fairly enlightened for an old white guy who’s ready to hang up his pen and try to figure out golf at the age of 67. But even I often used that second go-to excuse. Not my fault. Not my family’s fault. Nobody in my family came over on the Mayflower, they didn’t own plantations, and they didn’t own slaves.
But if we’re to call racism institutional, it would help to know what the word means. “Institutional” means established. It means that while we white people may not always have been overtly racist ourselves, we were the beneficiaries of an established system that did not always give people of color the same considerations it gave people like me.
The best example I can give is the time my car had been identified as having been at the scene of an armed holdup at a bank in Waltham. It was the summer of 1973, I was about a month shy of 20, and most likely didn’t even know where Waltham was. A detective came to my house and encountered me with a can of beer in my hand (I’d had an early day at Northeastern, it was summer, and I was eating lunch), and dressed like a beach bum.
I was petrified. I figured I’d be led into his car in cuffs and taken to wherever Waltham was. But I wasn’t.
At the time, all I could think was that I’d put on a good enough show so that he said “I guess you’re all right,” and let me be. I’ve never forgotten the incident, but would you care to wager how long it took me to realize that I’d probably not have been given the same benefit of the doubt had I been Black?
Sadly, this still seems to be the case. For whatever reasons (and I certainly don’t think it’s maliciousness in every case) people — even professional law enforcement people — have entirely different defense mechanisms when confronted with what they perceive as dangerous situations. And in an overwhelming number of cases, those mechanisms are triggered by skin color.
All of the above represents institutional racism.
I fear sometimes that days like Juneteenth, similar to Martin Luther King Day, serve as the perfect opportunities to celebrate Black culture, and remember the struggles of Black people, from a safe distance, which is easy enough to do. You nod, and smile, and say “gee, we’ve made a lot of progress on race relations in this country, haven’t we?” Then, we go back to enjoying lives we’re often reluctant to admit we attained because we were not people of color.
But contemplate this: we have set aside a day for Black people to celebrate June 19, 1865, as the day they were finally, legally free. This is in the same country where, four score and nine years earlier, we professed that all men were created equal.
There’s not too much irony there, is there?
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].
