Entry 567: Juneteenth

There was no school today to commemorate the new national holiday, Juneteenth.  It's cool and all, but it would have been nice to get more than an evening's notice.  We literally got a text at 6:01 pm last night informing us school was cancelled.  S and I already had light work days scheduled (the kids had "graduation" ceremonies we wanted to attend -- or rather that she wanted to attend and I felt compelled to attend), so we were able to handle it, but still, that's harsh on parents with elementary school kids.  Maybe you go ahead and make the announcement now but the actual observation doesn't start until 2022.  I mean, I can't imagine working-class Black parents (of which there are many in DC) were very excited about losing their childcare on such short notice.

In general, however, I am in favor of Biden making Juneteenth a national holiday.  We need more awareness about the history of slavery and its abolition in the US.  Kids learn about it a little bit in history classes, but not very extensively.  I didn't even know what Juneteenth was until I watched an episode of Atlanta a few years ago.  So, I was, like, 41 when I learned.  That's not right.  We need more Black history in school -- actual history -- not just performative paeans to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks every February.

Unfortunately, however, the Republican party seems to be trying to turn "critical race theory" into a culture-war weapon, which doesn't bode well for a robust Black history curriculum.  Critical race theory is such a nebulous term it's absolutely going to be coopted by Trumpers (the same way as "cancel culture") to mean anything that they don't like, regardless of how true or merited it actually is.

I think most people, especially those who lean right, just don't want to (or can't) confront how truly awful slavery was.  I think they think of it as really bad in the same way that the oppression of women was once really bad.  But it goes so far beyond that.  It literally goes into worst-atrocities-in-human-history territory.  I mean imagine "owning" people and forcing them to do work for you and being allowed to beat (and even kill) them if they don't do it.  And you could also rape them -- maybe not totally legally, but who's going to stop you?  Think about those stories of children being kidnapped and locked away for years on end, and everybody's reaction is What kind of sick fuck could ever do that to a fellow human being?  But how is what American heroes like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock did any better?  When people talk about not wanting to deify our founding fathers because they were white supremacist slave-holders I completely get it.  I agree.

The flip-side of this coin, however, is that the worse you recognize the past to be, the farther it means we've come since then.  This is something a lot of people on the left need to take to heart.  Too many liberals suffer from progress phobia (a term I heard credited to the science writer Steven Pinker), whereby they are scared to acknowledge the undeniable fact that things are way better for Black Americans than they used to be, and very likely they are getting better still, slowly but surely, as I write this.  For some reason, it's gauche to say this, and when you do you have to give a five-minute caveat beforehand: Certainly racism still exists today, there are widespread discrepancies in the treatment of Black and White people in so many areas, including schooling, housing, and policing, we still have a long way...

Well, I set out to talk about going to the pool, and pumped out a 500-word tangent on slavery instead.  I'm going to hit a few more topics, lightning-round style and call it a night.

• We went to the pool today.  We got a summer membership to one some other families from school go to.  It's not a super chichi country club pool or anything like that.  It's pretty bare bones (and the bathrooms are actually kinda gross -- at least the men's is), but it's affordable and it's a pool, so it's quite nice.
• I started up online Scrabble again.  I might start playing tournaments again too.  I need some time to build my skills back up though.
• I also joined my neighborhood fight club.  One of the other dads from school is a boxing enthusiast, and he has a little set-up in his garage, so he's been holding makeshift workout sessions for me and another guy.  It's pretty awesome, actually.
• Remember in a previous entry I said Lil' S2 is really good at math?  I shit you not, he solved the following problem in his head correctly with absolutely no help: The zoo has 112 types of reptiles and amphibians in their exhibits.  There are 72 types of reptiles and the rest are amphibians.  How many more types of reptiles are there than amphibians in the exhibits?
• The correct answer is 32, if you're not as smart as a five-year-old.
  

Until next time...