Source: Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox / Getty
Black Americans have been fighting for access to Juneteenth for almost half a century (longer in many areas).
As a celebration of the freedom Black slaves were owed in Texas for years, it is a well-earned acknowledgment of the suffering and perseverance our community faced the last 500 years.
As I’ve felt it when cities sprung up across the country to remove effigies of slave owners and racists from city squares and barks; as I’ve felt when the first round of emails of Black solidarity went around in light of George Floyd’s passing.
A year ago, I shared the long history of cultural theft for Black Music History Month, which conveniently does fall during June along with Pride Month — two significant events rooted in the contributions of Black people (Pride Month being a commemoration of Stonewall, a riot summoned by Marsha P. Johnson, a trans activist).
And yet, music criticism is co-opted today by white people at even the Black targeted publications and media; and the LGBTQ+ community has garnered an incorrect representation of whiteness, while much of it does, in fact, belong to the Black Trans and Queer people often ostracized in these same communities by equally racist white gay men.
