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| Juneteenth and Freedom |
When a word was circulated earlier this month that Donald J. Trump will resume his campaign rallies on June 19, with an event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the confluence of history and location indicating that his ethnic hunt has usually taken on new levels of nuances. On its surface, Tulsa's choice challenges political logic. In the upcoming presidential election, Oklahoma is neither in play (Trump currently leads 19 points there) nor profitable (only seven electoral votes will be given to the winner).
By comparison, Trump trails Joe Biden by five points in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and eight points in Michigan - all of the states with more electoral votes that are critical to Trump's hopes for the presidential election. But when taken in conjunction with history - June 19, or Juneentity, the unofficial vacation in which African Americans acknowledge the belated liberation of the enslaved Texas population - the choice of the second largest city in a densely populated and deep red state is of added importance. Ninety-nine years ago, black community homes and businesses were settled in that city, and up to three hundred people were killed by the white mob in what became known as the Tulsa Massacre.
For close observers, Trump's move looked like a fatal blow to Ronald Reagan's decision to speak in Philadelphia, Mississippi - the site of the killing of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwinner - in August 1980, immediately after winning the Republican presidential nomination. (In June 2016, Donald Trump, Jr. stopped campaigning there on behalf of his father. Trump himself made three electoral visits to Mississippi, where that summer he conducted a higher poll than any other state.) But Trump is likely to have, Whoever suggested in his administration the Tulsa procession, more contemporary fears. If the serial protests, anger, and fires of the past three weeks can be seen as a statement about race in the United States, the aim of the march is to be a response. Like Reagan in 1980, Trump appears to be seeking to rally support among whites who not only tolerate racism but feel that they are, in fact, the ones who are being persecuted.
However, even this inspiring thing from the middle finger was fired at the movement through Trump's incompetence. For decades, even among African Americans, Juneteenth was primarily celebrated by those who lived or were in Texas. In recent years, it has been observed more widely, but still overwhelmingly by African Americans. Trump's team, in designing the Gentianth stunt, raised awareness greatly from today. Companies across the country made Juneteenth a paid day off; State governors, including Ralph Northam, of Virginia, have announced plans to declare them a state holiday. The violent reaction prompted Trump to delay the march by 24 hours. But, on the other hand, the actions of the US administration were perfectly appropriate for a single day linked to the contrasting history of freedom in the United States.
On June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to surrender General Order No. 3, which proclaims liberation, the civil war ended for two months, and liberty was, at least in theory, granted two and a half years ago, under the Declaration of Liberation President Lincoln. (Congress passed the thirteenth amendment, which abolished most forms of slavery, in January 1865, although it had not been ratified until December.) The size and geography of Texas assisted slave owners in attempts to prevent bonded persons from learning to be free. This was vital to the war effort: a Lincoln decree had been passed to disrupt the Confederate economy, which was dependent on bonded labor. And as far as the southern whites can maintain the knowledge of emancipation for themselves, the workforce can be watched. The strategy did not work: news of emancipation spread and the Confederate states were impeded by fleeing blacks to union lines, with many men joining the northern ranks. The language of the Texas system talks about the fragile nature of this new freedom. The paragraph that confirms the end of slavery also warns the black population against inactivity and indicates that unauthorized gatherings in military centers will not be tolerated.
The declaration of the liberation of slaves himself had been hedged to achieve a balance between northern interests and the stimulation of southern states with the possibility of retaining slavery at least if it returned to the union: the matter only freed people enslaved in the regions of the country that were rebellious against the federal government. But Texas was in rebellion, and its black population was eligible for freedom on January 1, 1863, when the declaration entered into force. Texas ignored the declaration, as did the other ten Confederate states. All of this points to a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of Juneteenth. The fact that slave owners extracted an additional thirty months of unrepaired work from people who were bought, sold, and labored, such as livestock, throughout their lives, is a reason for mourning, not for celebration. In honoring that moment, we must recognize the morals at the heart of that day in Galveston and in American life as a whole: there is a wide gap between the concept of freedom engraved on paper and the reality of freedom in our lives.
In this regard, Gentiint is present as a counter-point for the fourth time in July; The latter heralds the arrival of the American proverb, the former confirming how difficult it was to live up to the level of these 10,000. This failure was not limited to the south. Northern states generally abolished slavery in the decades after the American Revolution, but many slave owners there, instead of freeing people who were holding them in slavery, sold them to merchants in the south, or moved to states where the establishment was still legal. The black men, women, and children who heard the Granger Declaration 150 years ago in Galveston were not slaves; They were a measure of American democracy.
There is an inherent paradox in the fact that liberation is celebrated primarily among African Americans, and that the celebration is rooted in the perception of slavery as something that happened to blacks, not something the country committed. The paradox is based on the assumption that the arrival of freedom should be accepted with gratitude, rather than self-reflection on what allowed deprivation in the first place. Liberation is a sign of progress for white Americans, not blacks. Trump, in planning to go to Tulsa for the sake of Junetti, was not hunting blacks. He was hunting the United States Constitution
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