Another Great Day for White Conservative Platitudes
By 
This spring, I have been perplexed by anniversaries meant to honor history. Memorial Day, a holiday created by Black people to honor Black veterans in Charleston, South Carolina, seemed this year to focus more on remembering George Floyd and commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre. This Juneteenth also feels different, as more non-Black Americans are now incorporating it into their summer celebrations and lawmakers have pushed to observe the holiday at a federal level. Yet it seems the memory of Juneteenth is being shaped by symbolic rather than substantive gains. Moreover, the proliferation of Juneteenth events is taking place at the same time as the banning of critical race theory and curricula focused on slavery’s lasting effects. It is impossible to celebrate Juneteenth and simultaneously deny the teaching of America’s foundational legacy.
This disconnect exists because there is a pointed difference between history and memory. History is the study of the past. History consists of facts, events, people, and irrefutable occurrences. History is American slavery and the Civil War and emancipation. How Americans understand slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation, though, is colored by memory, which tends to honor only the most shallow aspects of history. Statues, flags, and songs are part of the tangible manifestations of memory, and what is worthy of remembering in this country is often highly contested. In my years of work as a historian, I have found that the public usually uses history and memory interchangeably, though they are not the same. History is immovable. Memory is malleable. I am constantly thinking about how to reconcile history with memory, the past with the present, and symbolic changes with systemic ones.
Holidays, like memories, are chosen. They are collective social agreements employed to acknowledge an event or a person. Often composed of parades, barbecues, and corporate sponsorships, the observation of a holiday is relatively low-stakes and usually distanced from the full history that compelled it. Though Black folks have honored their ancestors in meaningful ways on Juneteenth for more than a century, to many non-Black citizens it marks a day off from work and little else. But holidays cannot be divorced from history. Americans cannot discuss freedom and the Fourth of July without invoking slavery. Americans cannot celebrate Memorial Day without paying homage to those who died in service of their country. Americans cannot recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day without confronting the violence of white supremacy. Choosing to remember palatable histories over painful histories serves no one—it merely fosters fantasy.
And this is exactly what is happening here. A Black holiday is being turned into a fantasy moment for conservative whites. Of course, mentioning this in a classroom might get me fired in 10 states and probably 15 by the fall. Critical Race Theory!