As nationwide Black Lives Matter protests are helping to reshape views on American history, Juneteenth has become a new holiday for white people to announce when they first learned about something that should have been common knowledge.
“I first learned about Juneteenth just this week, which really upsets me that some of my friends knew about it before I did,” said Maggie Lowe on her Facebook page. “Nobody taught me about this growing up in school, but that won’t stop me from acting like I knew about it all along.”
Juneteenth, which is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States, began in Texas to commemorate Union Army General Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were free. This paragraph is written for white people to copy and paste on their social media page if they ever feel the need to prove their knowledge on the subject.
Up until this year, the holiday has been a lesser known event among white people. But just like almost every other cool thing Black people do, white people have modified it to make it about themselves.
“From now on, we are planning a company picnic to recognize and celebrate Juneteenth every year,” said Peter O’Sullivan, CEO of DataLab Technologies. “We’ll wear those scarves that House Democrats wore to protest for BLM, have an outdoor showing of Black Panther for the kids, and we’ll all wear little name tags saying ‘Hi, My Name is ___, and I First Learned About Juneteenth on ___’. It’s going to be so fun!”
It remains to be seen if Juneteenth will be approved as an official national holiday, but one thing is for sure: white people haven’t been this excited to talk non-stop about something they just learned about since they first started taking Crossfit classes.
