Reflecting on Juneteenth by Kat Cheairs

Reflecting on Juneteenth by Kat Cheairs

A year ago, in the United States and other elsewheres, began a groundswell of protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. Just this past week, Darnella Frazier, the bystander who recorded the video seen round the world of Floyd pinned to the ground by the knee of Derek Chauvin, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize citation as an example of what everyday citizens can do to intervene in times of injustice. The tricky part though is that we are not unaccustomed to the consumption and witnessing of Black death. It’s normalized to such a degree that it’s a bass note playing underneath everything around us. This fact has been with us since the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade.

What made this particular moment different from the postcards of lynched Black Americans sent through the US postal service during the late 19th and early 20th century? How is this video document more haunting than Harriet Jacobs’ and Frederick Douglass’ written accounts of slavery in their own autobiographies? Has the prose of James Baldwin and Fannie Lou Hamer not made it clearer? Are the unrecognizable eyes and face of Emmett Till from the photograph Mamie Till released so many decades ago not haunting enough?

In recent weeks, we’ve seen an attack on voting rights that made jelly bean and literacy tests seem rather mild in comparison to not being able to get water while waiting in line to vote. There has not been an abatement to the killing of unarmed Black people during routine traffic stops. Black people are still bearing the disproportionate weight of COVID-19 in the US as governors in red and blue states alike declare the “war” on SARS COV-2 officially over and have declared the country 100% open. Then there’s the public refusals to honor; the contract of a journalist scholar, a tennis star not wanting to do interviews right after a match, or a gymnast for performing yet another gravity defying feat because she can. They clapped back with refusals of their own, but still...

While critical race theory (CRT) is being legislated against by those who cannot even define what it is, comes late breaking news (literally) that Juneteenth is now a federal holiday. What a strange binary and ironic world we are living in at the moment! How does one recognize an emancipation that never really arrived?

Sometimes it’s hard to not sit in the heartbreak of it all. The rage and sorrow can be so profound that it can crush one’s chest. Black people are the most optimistic folks I’ve ever met despite the pessimistic circumstances. We big up ourselves and each other for our triumphs and abilities to press on despite it all. Black artists and cultural workers never stopped making through the pandemic. Insisting on joy. Insisting on rest. Insisting on refusal. Insisting on continuing to do the work.

Many people will not have ever heard of Juneteenth or understand it’s significance while others have been honoring it for quite some time without the federal recognition. What’s coming up for me as I think about Juneteenth is of course to do something nice and sweet for myself; to take my rest. I also want to honor those we lost to the transatlantic slave trade, the institution that produced the wealth of the West and moved capitalism from theory into practice. I want to think about the flesh of Africans still circulating in the waters of the Atlantic ocean from those pushed and thrown overboard off slave ships and those who dove of their own volition. I want to think about how Breonna Taylor’s family, especially her mother, still dream about her and imagine Breonna walking through the front door. I want to think about how much Black death is enough Black death to get people off our backs. I want to sit with how many Black folks we’ve lost to cancer, AIDS and COVID-19. I want to re-read Hortense Spillers’ Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book. I want to make time to actually grieve, mourn and honor my rage. I want to feel the weight of my own refusals, setbacks, silencing, wage theft, womb wrecking related to being Black and femme in America.

I don’t want to just focus only on the glow up. We all know Black folks made jazz and pot liquor into something life sustaining. I’ve had my own version of that many times over. There will be plenty of time to get back to that. On this Juneteenth, as we move through the afterlife of slavery and recognize the ongoing process of emancipation, I will have brunch, a bath and take some time to remember the not so warm and fuzzy bits; to tend to the angry ghosts of the too soon departed. I can be a quantum Black futurist and firmly grounded in my time, place and context.

Ballast

Flesh cut, stinging, stinking in the hot sun

The water seems cool and inviting

Perhaps it’s my mother in those waves I see

Jump