Sunday, June 19, 2022, will be the second annual Juneteenth Independence Day recognized as a Massachusetts state holiday. On Thursday June 17, 2021, the Juneteenth Day became a federal holiday in the United States when President Joe Biden signed into law a bill passed by Congress. Almost at the same time, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker also officially recognized June 19 as the newest state-recognized holiday.
Juneteenth National Independence Day is important to African American in our nation because of the meaning it conveys to commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. In our history, Texas was the last state of the Confederacy with institutionalized slavery. On the anniversary date of the June 19th, 1865, General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger announced the abolishment of slavery. This is the point when enslaved persons in parts of Texas first learned their liberation and Freedom. While President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, full emancipation did not happen until nearly two and a half years later.
Jamelle Antoine Bouie, an African American columnist for The New York Times, noted in his June 18, 2020 column:
“Emancipation wasn’t a gift bestowed on the slaves; it was something they took for themselves, the culmination of their long struggle for freedom, which began as soon as chattel slavery was established in the 17th century, and gained even greater steam with the Revolution and the birth of a country committed, at least rhetorically, to freedom and equality. In fighting that struggle, black Americans would open up new vistas of democratic possibility for the entire country.”
Did the abolishment of the institutional slavery represent the happy ending of our fight for rights? Like most elements in American history, the answer is never just black and white. “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” Said Toni Morrison, an African American novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
The end of an old institution transferred us to the beginning of our new journey: our struggle to fight for equality. Through the 100 years following the Emancipation Proclamation, we lived through Jim Crow laws, Brown v Board of Education, and the eventual passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. Nevertheless, racial segregation and inequity remained a constant in American schools. Lincoln might have signed a proclamation that offered some sort of equality proposal, but true justice would take much longer.
Since 2020, conservative U.S. lawmakers have been restricting and banning the influence of Critical Race Theory, as well as other anti-racism curriculum in states’ primary and secondary education. In effect, the memory of slavery history and mistreatments to the racial groups is gradually being eliminated among the new generations of students.
This year, African American culture will be celebrated during special events designed for the holiday in Boston: foods, arts, music, dance, and retrieved memory of the history of slavery as well as emancipation. In other words, the cultural practices of today’s African Americans need to be appreciated, as important as for the mainstream to understand the slavery history.
How do Asian Americans perceive the Juneteenth Holiday? Before I introduce the perception from the Asian Americans about Juneteenth as a state holiday, let’s examine June 19th from a different point of view.
On June 19, 1982, in Detroit, a Chinese American draftsman, Vincent Chin, was beaten to death in a racially motivated hate crime. Two white suspects were Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, laid-off autoworker Michael Nitz. Chin was assaulted, beaten, and blamed due to his Asian heritage. Both white men used racial slurs and attacked Chin because they identified him as a Japanese American, in a period when Japanese automotive competed with Detroit’s Big Three in the U.S. domestic market.
Ebens and Nitz were first charged with second-degree murder, then the charge was lowered to manslaughter, with 3 years’ probation and $3,720 fine. The murder awakened Asian American’s consciousness to their civil rights. The president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council Kin Yee suggested that such a judgement was indirectly claimed as a “$3,000 license to kill” a Chinese American.
It’s in this sense that June 19th has a different meaning to Asian Americans. Where African Americans and allies can see the date as commemorating the start of a freedom struggle still in progress, many in the Asian community will connect the date with a struggle that’s created scars that are still raw and bleeding. We see a growing anti-Asian sentiment, hate crimes, and deaths in our own community and yet June 19th is also allowing us to see the race and unequal treatments.
During the pandemic, while Asian Americans are being scapegoated as originators of the virus (while also suffering from it), communities of color are being impacted even more severely than predominantly white neighborhoods. According to the report made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of February 15, 2022, Hispanic people represent a larger portion of the Covid cases (24%), while the Black people share a similar portion of the Covid cases (13%), yet they have relatively higher death rates (14%). It’s in this respect that 2022’s Juneteenth should be more salient than ever. It should awake and unite African American and Asian groups, showing them that their struggle for equality and respect is the same. Their goals are identical. Juneteenth might mark the symbolic start of true freedom for one group, but in that process of recognition it is not dismissing the struggles of other groups.
On Monday, May 2, 2022, the Muslim American Mayor of Cambridge, Sumbul Siddiqui, was at the White House to celebrate the nationally recognized Muslim holiday Eid with President Joe Biden. With this special event, the Muslim American group’s culture and ethnicity will gain more attention by the mainstream culture.
Biden claimed the Eid holiday as one that showed “the incredible stories of the indispensable contributions of Muslims all across this great nation, of Muslim Americans, a diverse and vibrant part of the United States, making invaluable cultural and economic contributions to communities all across the nation.” Will this Muslim festival be the next state recognized holiday in Massachusetts? If we ever expect to grow and unite as a nation, voices from all ethnic minority groups need to be heard.
Emil Guillermo, an Asian American print and broadcast journalist, commentator, and humorist, has said that “once you understand the purposeful ignorance that allowed slavery to be extended beyond its time, you understand how those subjected to this and their descendants deserve a whole lot more than a federal holiday.”
To this writer, Guillermo’s comments indicate the long road that the states still need to build to eliminate the inequality within and amongst the ethnic minorities. Recognizing and remembering the slavery history as well as the poor treatment of all immigrant groups will be one part of that road. To respect and give a forum for the cultural practice of ethnic minority groups will be another crucial part. If you are interested in building a better society, please don’t hesitate to get involved with Juneteenth celebrations and all other initiatives to bring a much needed spotlight to neglected historical events.
