re: a little racist

quote:

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It is set up as a separate Independence Day for black people. A Nation with separate independence days for different populations is divisive.

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First of all, slavery was divisive. The end of slavery was divisive. Pretending that acknowledging the day enslaved Americans learned they were free is somehow the real source of division flips history completely backward. If anything, declaring the celebration of the end of slavery is divisive puts you right back on one side of the only divide that ever mattered in that era. And it ain't the winning one.

The country already had separate independence days based on race. Juneteenth has been around for 150 years. It's not a modern invention. That is how the system functioned for generations. If the factual timeline makes you angry, take that up with your therapist, not with people finally getting a holiday recognizing when Independence Day actually reached them.

If a group goes from “no recognition at all” to “one federal holiday marking the day their freedom became real,” and your reaction is to call it divisive, that says everything about who the problem really is.

Spoiler alert: it's you.