THE PREDICTABLE CO-OPTATION OF JUNETEENTH
Now in its second year of being a Federal holiday in the United States, we have begun to see the rise of co-optation by corporations seeking to capitalise on celebrations and acknowledgements of Juneteenth. We have even seen eugenicist movements associated with the far-right attempting to co-opt Juneteenth. The branding and capitalistic mirage that emerged this year ahead of 19 June is no surprise to activists and organisers who have long pointed out the fallacy of Eurocentric holidays. This has been highlighted by author, historian, and educator Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango, who notes that “holidays are the institutionalised celebrations of the thoughts and ideas of a particular philosophy [and] worldview.” Therefore, Eurocentric holidays reinforce the identity of the oppressors in the minds of the oppressed. For that reason, it is unsurprising that public recognition by a predominantly white mainstream of a day which has always been acknowledged and celebrated by African-Americans, has fallen victim to the same dishonest and performative “glossification” that has come to signify US Federal holidays.
AFRIKAN RESISTANCE MUST BE CELEBRATED
Nevertheless, it is still vital that holidays representing the rich heritage of Afrikan resistance with its unique stories and traditions are celebrated. Days like Juneteenth also offer a space for organising community events and bringing the community together to honour past and continued resistance. The collective called Community Movement Builders champions this idea and has given us the Afrikan People’s Holiday List, which is a resource for moving away from celebrating Eurocentric holidays (which usually celebrate colonialism, imperialism, genocide, war, and violence); instead, it offers our community the opportunity to learn more about and engage with our own history –– a history that is usually not shared with us during mainstream education opportunities.
REPARATIONS, TRUTH, AND RACIAL HEALING
Instead of Walmart offering us great value ice cream that asks buyers to “share and celebrate African-American culture, emancipation and enduring hope” by purchasing and munching on some swirled red velvet and cheesecake flavoured ice cream adorned in the colours of Pan-Africanism, America must rectify the more than four centuries of enslavement, systemic racism, and economic violence through reparations, truth, and racial healing.
Walmart’s new ice cream began to appear on shelves against the backdrop of the mass shooting of 14 May 2022, the day a white domestic terrorist went to a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York, intending to kill Black people, and proceeded to enter a supermarket, kill ten, and injure three. The gunman was caught on video apologising to the white store manager after pointing his gun at the man and realising he was white. Black people in America continue to live in a state of racial terror where they may face violence from the state or the masses at any moment.
HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK FAILS TO ADDRESS RACISM AND ANTI-BLACKNESS
The reality is that the human rights of People of African Descent in the United States are rarely taken seriously by the state. A common failing of the human rights framework is that it struggles to adequately incorporate measures of redress and safeguarding for rights infringements that occur on the basis of racism and anti-Blackness. For example, despite the fact that the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) came into effect in 1969, the United States did not ratify it for another 25 years (in 1994) and had still failed to incorporate or publicise the treaty's effects by 2008.
Additionally, no mechanism enabling an individual complaints procedure that would allow people to seek remedy for infringements directly with the Committee (CERD), and to hold the state accountable, has been accepted or implemented. The unfortunate result of such patchwork application has limited the efficacy of this Convention, with less than 50 complaints being registered with the Committee by 2011 and the majority of those cases being deemed as inadmissible or leading to a finding of no violation.
Additionally, the framework and language utilised by the ICERD and the Committee also fall short. Using language like “complaint” trivialises the genuine pain and trauma experienced by those seeking redress through this mechanism. Even in the summations of their findings in the case of Hagan v. Australia, the Committee reported that the name of the “E. S. ‘Nigger’ Brown Stand” at Toowoomba sports field was not originally intended to demean anyone, as the stand was named in honour of white 1920s rugby league player Edward Stanley Brown. This conclusion and attempt by the Committee to minimise harm are concerning, as the petitioner first raised concerns about the use of the n-word as early as 1999, a time at which it should have been clear that the use of such a term was demeaning and degrading. Indeed, the n-word described a labour category in the late 18th and 19th centuries that African-American labourers adopted for themselves as a social identity. White people then used the descriptor word as a distancing or derogatory epithet. Therefore, it is likely that even by the 1920s, it was being used as a pejorative and mocking slur. However, the Committee did agree that the use of the word was racially offensive and recommended that it should be removed. The minimisation through justification and general language framing by the Committee indicates that it does not take anti-Black racism seriously enough to call it out and effectively name and shame it. Thus, petitioners are unlikely to regard or engage with ICERD as a mechanism for seeking racial justice.
CELEBRATING RESILIENCE
For this reason, there is deep value in continuing to celebrate Afrikan holidays like Juneteenth. There is also a benefit in keeping it in the community, as any nation which incarcerates more people than any other country - and more than one-third of the incarcerated population is made up of Black people who are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white people - has no right to posture about celebrating Black liberation, when it is deeply invested in the continued subjugation and oppression of the Black community nationally and internationally.
For those who wish to celebrate Juneteenth and are not from the community, it is essential to remember that Juneteenth is a day to learn, reflect, and celebrate resilience. It is a day to be respected as joyful and is a healing space for the Black community that should not be co-opted. Let us from the community continue to honour the history of the day from our own contexts and perspectives.
Tofunmi Odugbemi is a challenger and disrupter of spaces. She applies her developed sense of justice, ingenuity, and leadership in areas where academia intersects with the legal world. Womanism, Black feminism, anti-ableist, anti-racist, anti-establishment, abolitionist, anti-capitalist, and queer movements inform her work.