Juneteenth Won't Be An Important Holiday

It will eventually be just another summerday off

Today marks the third Juneteenth America has officially celebrated as a federal holiday. The country would be a whole lot better without it.

We already have a black holiday with Martin Luther King Day. We didn’t need another one, especially one that its proponents wanted to weaponize to browbeat America into giving reparations. Juneteenth enshrines the false idea that blacks are the protagonists of American history while whites are its villains. Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale made a strong argument against the holiday when he voted against in three years ago:

Let’s call an ace an ace. This is an effort by the Left to create a day out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country.

Rosendale was right on the mark on why the Left so badly wanted this holiday. But America appears to have different plans for Juneteenth.

When this was first made a holiday, I thought it might one day supplant Independence Day in importance. It was a year after George Floyd. America appeared well on the road to establishing Afrolatry as its state religion. DEI was sweeping through schools and businesses. Anti-white racism was being normalized beyond comprehension, with kids’ cartoons even pushing a hate whitey message. The Left was tearing down monuments left and right–even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln weren’t safe from iconoclasm. Our heritage was deemed too white and oppressive. It seemed like the nation was set to adopt a whole new history of itself, one free of the white man. 

What better way to formalize this process than to make Juneteenth the new Independence Day? Instead of celebrating dead white men, America would celebrate blacks (who also somehow freed themselves) and dethrone whites from their central place in America history.

But the Left seems to run into a problem. It’s not that normal Americans are in the thrall of a full-on backlash against the meaning of Juneteenth. They just don’t care enough about it to be impacted by it.

There are two factors that will undermine Juneteenth’s importance to the average American. One is the average American’s desire to enjoy a summer holiday and not brood over its anti-white message. The second is that America’s new demographics may not want to center blackness as the core of America’s story. They want their own identity extolled. Guatemalans and Pakistanis don’t want to pay reparations and see the black experience as more important than theirs.

Most Americans aren’t that familiar with Juneteenth. Seventy-seven percent of Americans say they know a little about it, but just seventeen percent say they know a lot about it. A third of blacks know a lot about it, while only 13 percent of whites do. Out of the 90 percent of Americans who are aware of the holiday, just 68 percent of them could accurately identify what the holiday celebrates.

Americans aren’t that familiar with their summer holidays, besides July 4th. Less than half of the country knows why we celebrate Memorial Day. The supposedly solemn day is, for most Americans, the day pools open and summer officially begins. You go to the beach, not reflect on the sacrifices of America’s fallen heroes. It’s a similar deal with Labor Day. Few celebrate the working man on the holiday–Americans are too busy enjoying the last long weekend of the summer. 

The same thing will probably happen with Juneteenth. The reason July 4th is one of the major holidays is that it’s a day filled with public festivities open to all. Every American can experience the patriotic parades and fireworks. The meaning of the holiday–in some form–is conveyed to the public through these displays and rituals. It’s also an upbeat and happy day. We declared our independence from foreign rule. There’s nothing gloomy to reflect on.

This likely won’t be replicated by Juneteenth. It’s an exclusivist holiday for blacks to celebrate–no one else. People either work like normal or get the day off to go to the pool. The holiday’s meaning and significance fails to impress on them if it’s just a day off in the sunshine. Blacks will stage their parades and events, but no one else will attend. There is no equivalent to Independence Day fireworks.

The differences in how non-blacks and blacks approach the holiday can be seen in this old Saturday Night Live clip about MLK Day. In the skit, the white characters plan on drinking beer, playing air hockey, or even going to Atlantic City for the holiday. But the appearance of a black co-worker forces them to change their tune and accept an invitation to an all-day recital of MLK speeches at a black church. The black character gifts the whites “Great Kings of Africa” books, while the whites hand over a wallet and a laptop. It was all just a sham for the black guy to get free stuff from the whites as he plans on celebrating the holiday in Atlantic City.

Whites will be uncomfortable around the holiday and blacks will be able to guilt trip them about it–but that’s not going to stop anyone from enjoying the day off. For blacks, it will be an important heritage holiday. For everyone else, it won’t mean much.

Juneteenth is firmly situated in a black-white dynamic. Immigrants aren’t as eager to indulge in such a framework. They want themselves included rather than to celebrate either whiteness or blackness. They would much rather have July 4th turned into a multicultural celebration than extol a holiday exclusively dedicated to blackness. They want to be “represented” by America’s holidays, which is why they prefer “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” over Columbus Day. They can claim solidarity with their fellow colonized folks. Juneteenth doesn’t present that opportunity. Only blacks–and just “American Descendants of Slavery’--can claim it.

That’s a population in decline. Like the rest of the country, its population growth is driven by immigration. There is tension within the black community between immigrants and non-immigrants, particularly over identity and who belongs. African immigrants aren’t that interested in Juneteenth because it’s not their heritage being celebrated. As ADOS numbers slip, fewer remain to deeply care about the day.

It’s ironic that America’s multiculturalism may be the greatest hindrance to its most multicultural holiday. But that’s just the way our country works. “Our Diversity” means we can’t have holidays with any deep meaning for the entire nation. Everyone demands inclusion, but the more inclusive something becomes, the more shallow it is. Anything particularist or special is removed, leaving a hollow, inoffensive artifice. The Christmas season, for instance, now becomes a generic “Holiday” season. 

Even though it’s a day dedicated to the achievements of white men, July 4th will still be a more important day than Juneteenth because it’s more inclusive. The whiteness of it can easily be obscured and a multicultural character can be imposed on it. The blackness of Juneteenth can not be pushed aside, which is why it will never supplant Independence Day. The Fourth of July stands for generic “good things” such as freedom and fun. That’s appealing to pretty much all Americans. It doesn’t force them to reflect on anything or consider reparations. It merely makes them think about getting another beer as they watch the fireworks.