As this site noted last year, Juneteenth is a true cause for patriotic celebration, for all Americans. Not just for Black Americans, not for northerners, but all Americans. All of America gained with the ending of slavery, as we grew in fidelity to our founding conception, .
This nation conceived itself in a creed of rights for all persons and government dedicated to secure those rights. Of course treating any human as property directly contravenes that creed. But the sin goes beyond even that direct violation. A creed of personal rights calls every person to address every other in their full personhood. If all humans have unalienable rights, then all need respect for all the pursuits they may take up, all the interests they may explore, all the beliefs they entertain – so long as no one violates anther’s rights. Any persons who address others by only one aspect of their persona aims to reduce that person’s humanity, which violates this ethic. Those who perpetrate or condone this treatment therefore violate our creed. And this violation reduces that sinner as an American, to being a violator of rights. The reduction is likely less immediately painful to the violator, but still a reduction, just as racism reduced the slave’s humanity to a few physical characteristics.
Juneteenth did not end racism or discrimination, but it did obliterate the excuses for slavery and forced racists to erect elaborate and hypocritical masks over that sin. Juneteenth stripped away the conventional acceptance of creedal sin, which enabled next steps, however slowly, to be taken. And again, the discriminated against and the racist are both reduced by racism, so again, all Americans should celebrate progress toward its eradication.
No social movement occurs without dislocation and growing pains. But the movement signified by Juneteenth is in itself a mark of patriotic progress. So all Americans do have something to celebrate. Strike up the bands.
Common Conviction 