Make no mistake about it, my people can easily be roped in by the old “okie-doke” when it comes to gifts from the Massa. So, what do I mean?
In 2021, the US government proclaimed the Juneteenth day of commemoration to be a national holiday. The false merchants immediately perked up their ears, for to them it meant yet another day to provide embossed balloons, table napkins, signs, greeting cards, flags, and even ice cream to offer to the formerly enslaved people as a gesture of their acceptance, consent, and support of the notion of “freedom” for Black people and especially the notion of another opportunity to sell merchandise.
But wait a minute. What does this day of celebration mean, and what, really, is freedom? Let us examine this and compare the past and the present.
When our ancestors were enslaved, they worked every day except Sunday. And perhaps sometimes even then. They worked from sunup to sundown. They never received pay. They produced labor (and capital) for someone else. For the most part we, their descendants, work every day except Saturday and Sunday. And perhaps sometimes on those days. Many of us work greater than the customary eight hours because we must work more than one job to survive. Now we receive pay, but it is rarely beneficial to us: we pay rent/mortgage (to someone else), we buy food (from someone other than ourselves), we buy clothes (from someone other than ourselves), we drive cars that we buy from someone other than ourselves, and on and on and on. We produce labor and capital that is largely for someone else. Think about it.
Let us further compare.
The period between Christmas and New Year’s Day was a “slave holiday” on many plantations. During this time our enslaved ancestors were free to have fun and frolic to observe the holiday. Historians report that this period of revelry produced many tired and drunken workers who were required to return to work after the “holiday” was done. Let us pray that the revelry spawned in “celebration” of freedom in observance of Juneteenth does not produce the same. Let us pray that on this day we seek the wisdom of the ancestors and, like the first Juneteenth celebrants, come together as a family of familiar souls to strategize on a way forward that will strengthen and build our communities, thus providing a path to true freedom.
RADIO GILLIE 