The guy asked me why we needed to have a holiday for Juneteenth? Everybody is equal now, so why make a big deal out of what only benefited one group of people?
I knew the guy for some years, and I knew he didn’t think of himself as racist. But let’s be clear, those shoes fit him many days of the year. And he asked me this question because I’m as white as they come, with all of my ancestry coming from Europe, and most of that from the northern half of it.
I told him we have a holiday so that we can all celebrate this anniversary. Juneteenth is a celebration of us fixing a problem and making it right. This is great for all of us. It isn’t just that the last of the slaves were finally freed, it’s that we finally have a country where all are free. Why would we not want to celebrate this?
As a man I learned long ago that being right about something was only good if you actually are. And being wrong about something is only a problem if you don’t stop being wrong.
There are few things in life that are better than finding out you are wrong. Because we can all be wrong from time to time. We are all wrong about something, at some point. Think about being wrong and never learning that you are. Think about how much better it is to find out you were wrong, and then correct yourself.
It’s the most powerful thing there is. First, you get to stop being wrong, but more importantly, you now own your life in a way you didn’t before. You can make decisions about things from a much stronger position. Once you find out you were wrong – and change accordingly – you stop being captive to what other people tell you. You start seeing you can learn for yourself, and own your own future in a better way.
The nation is the same way. We have changed our Constitution twenty-seven times since it was written. Seventeen since the Bill of Rights. Each time we did that, it was a recognition of the country that we had been wrong about something, and found the national courage to own our error and correct it. That is a powerful thing. It is one the greatest things a country can do – admit a mistake and fix it.
We fixed slavery. No, we didn’t fix racism – we can’t really do that as a people. That change has to come to each individual. It should come to all, but we cannot collectively force a person to feel differently.
But the people are changing. Each generation is less racist than the last, and each generation sets their sights on finding the errors the previous generations made.
The founders of the nation got a lot right, there’s no doubt about that. They laid out a country where the power resided with the People. They formed a government built of representatives of those people, with checks and balances to keep power from concentrating. And laws for all to follow, and courts to try those who are alleged to have violated the laws, with juries of the People to decide the outcome. It’s a magnificent thing they did.
But they didn’t get everything right. A close study of the times shows they really couldn’t get some things right, like slavery. Because they wouldn’t have been able to get universal agreement, and the country would have never gotten off the ground.
But they framed the government – the Constitution – in a way that allowed the People to change it to fit their view of how things should be.
They set the bar high when they did this. It takes wide agreement to meet the requirements of amending the Constitution. A two-thirds agreement in both House and Senate, and that’s just to propose one. Then it needs to pass the legislature of three-fourths of the states. That’s thirty-eight out of fifty. A high bar.
Seventeen times since the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments)was adopted, the People met that bar and changed the Constitution. One of those times was to repeal an earlier amendment, so we know that even if we somehow make a bad choice, we can come back and fix it.
This is the power of the People.
We started this country with an original sin. And we had to fight a war with each other over that. But when we were done we changed the Constitution to reflect our achieved wisdom. We are better as a People because we recognized our error and we made it right. This is great for all of us.
So yes, we should have a holiday to remind us of our national greatness in this matter. We should be happy that slavery ended and all of the People are free. We should not ignore this date and just move on as if slavery didn’t happen. We should celebrate it, because it isn’t just a day when black Americans were all finally free. It is a day when America finally ended a bad deal, and turned our attention to working together for a better country.