Category: Diversity & Inclusion

Celebrating Juneteenth—A New Federal Holiday!

Image by breefulmelange from Pixabay

On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, recognizing the historical significance of the Juneteenth National Independence Day to the United States and that (1) history should be regarded as a means for understanding the past and solving the challenges of the future; and (2) the celebration of the end of slavery is an important and enriching part of the history and heritage of the United States.

June 19th (or “Juneteenth”) marks the anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States—the day slaves in Galveston, Texas, were finally freed from bondage—more than two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

In celebration of the holiday, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the August 12, 2020 session I co-hosted at NASA on “Mission to Inclusion: Cultivating an Antiracist Workplace”, featuring Professor Ibram Kendi.  To prepare for the session, I picked up Kendi’s book entitled How to Be an Antiracist.

Click here for a summary of Kendi’s book

Tears We Cannot Stop

We should all be about the business of finding, discussing and furthering solutions to our problems. But none of that can be done without at first speaking honestly about the problems we confront, with whoever in our ranks will listen and respond. - Michael Eric Dyson

Have you ever known real persecution?  I have not…but I’ve been learning a lot about other perspectives over the past several years (as noted in my “Diversity & Inclusion Incompetency” Journey).

Earlier this year, I read Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop, as I seek to gain a perspective that is very different from my own.

According to Dyson, America is in trouble, and a lot of that trouble—perhaps most of it—has to do with race. Everywhere we turn, there is discord and division, death and destruction.  Black and white people don’t merely have different experiences; we seem to occupy different universes, with worldviews that are fatally opposed to one another.

Of course, America is far from simply black and white by whatever definition you use, but the black-white divide has been the major artery through which the meaning of race has flowed throughout the body politic.

As Luke 12:48 puts it, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  As we pass through this Thanksgiving season, many of us have reflected on how much we’ve been given!

Click here to for more of Michael Eric Dyson’s Sermon to White America