11 ms·

I substantially prefer the term "Emancipation Day," as it gets the point across more clearly. Lots of people don't know what "Juneteenth" means, since it's not

by sfblah 1y ago

I substantially prefer the term "Emancipation Day," as it gets the point across more clearly. Lots of people don't know what "Juneteenth" means, since it's not a real word.

deleted 1y ago
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ryanmcbride 1y ago
Well they've got plenty of time to learn. As far as I know most people consider Emancipation Day the day that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law in 1863, whereas Juneteenth marks the day 2.5 years later that the last known enslaved people were freed from the people who decided to just not tell them about the law.
- ghastmaster 1y ago
  This is not true. The last slaves in the United States were set free by the thirteenth amendment in Delaware, IIRC. Emancipation Day could make sense as the last slaves freed by the emancipation proclamation took place on that date. General Order No. 3 - June 19, 1865 Thirteenth Amendment - December 6, 1865 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3#Misconcept... Text: A common misconception holds that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, or that the General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, marked the end of slavery in the United States. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified and proclaimed in December 1865, was the article that made slavery illegal in the United States nationwide, not the Emancipation Proclamation.[6][7][8][9] Another common misconception is that it took over two years for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas, and that slaves did not know they had already been freed by it. In fact, news of the Proclamation had reached Texas long before 1865, and many slaves knew about Lincoln's order emancipating them, but they had not been freed since the Union army had yet to reach Texas to enforce the Proclamation. Only after the arrival of the Union army and General Order No. 3 was the Proclamation widely enforced in Texas.
  - lukas099 1y ago
    In my opinion, we still have slaves in the USA. (In prison, as explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment)
  - ryanmcbride 1y ago
    Interesting thanks for the information. Regardless, people have been calling it Juneteenth for over a hundred years, it was made a national holiday as Juneteenth, I'm gonna keep calling it that.
    - ghastmaster 1y ago
      In Texas and maybe celebrated in other places(I haven't done the research) this is true. For a large swath of the United States it was obscure or unknown. Most of us learned about the Emancipation Proclamation though. Making Juneteenth a holiday rather than the Date of the Emancipation Proclamation is odd to me. It is as odd to me as say, celebrating Independence Day on the date the last colony got word of the signing on, hypothetically, July 5th.
  - stirfish 1y ago
    >The last slaves in the United States were set free by the thirteenth amendment Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. You may be surprised to learn that, coincidentally, America has more people in prison than anywhere else.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - mateo411 1y ago
    The Emancipation Proclamation freed very few slaves. The order did not apply to areas of the Union which still had slaves, nor did it apply to areas of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. Although, it did apply to unoccupied areas of the Confederacy. The government of the Confederacy was unlikely to follow an order issued by the Union during the Civil War. It may have encouraged some slaves in the Confederacy to flee, if they found out about it.
- ImJamal 1y ago
  Did the Emancipation Proclamation actual emancipate anybody? The South didn't free them and the proclamation explicitly allowed the Northern states that had slavery to continue to have slaves.
  - bilbo0s 1y ago
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but maybe that's why black Americans celebrate Juneteenth instead? Kind of makes sense to me.
    - mistrial9 1y ago
      African-Americans in coastal California for the most part do not care about Juneteenth.. African-American politicians do try to get a photo op. A very large majority of low income African-Americans in North and Southern California, do not care about this day, do not mention it, do not do special events for it, do not mark it on any calendar or gather with special clothes on for it. compare and contrast to "Kwanzaa" also source: been there, done that
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        > Black Americans in coastal California do not care about Juneteenth.. Some do, some don't. "Black Americans in Coastal California" aren't a homogenous group, and this varies a lot by things like family geographic history, socioeconomic status, and a variety of other factors. Source: Also been there, also done that.
        bilbo0s 1y ago
        Sorry, what do you guys mean by "been there, done that"? Do you mean that you're slave descended black americans, and, in the case of HN User mistrial9, therefore speak for most of the slave descended black americans in coastal California? Or do you guys mean that you celebrate Juneteenth. Thus, "been there, done that"? The former I would challenge you on, despite obviously not being "black american coastal Californian?". The latter I would never challenge you on as that's your business.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > Juneteenth marks the day 2.5 years later that the last known enslaved people were freed Nope, just the last in the Confederate States; the last Union chattel slaves (e.g., in Delaware) were freed by operation of law a few months later with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. (And that's not even discussing penal slavery allowed under the 13th Amendment.)
  - TremendousJudge 1y ago
    >(And that's not even discussing penal slavery allowed under the 13th Amendment.) To expand on this, knowingbetter did an in-depth video on this topic[0]. The salient bit is that penal slavery was ended in 1941-1942 by Roosevelt, so that the Japanese couldn't use it as war propaganda against the US. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > the salient bit is that penal slavery was ended in 1941-1942 by Roosevelt, No, convict leasing, one of several manifestations of penal slavery, was (formally) ended by Roosevelt then. Penal slavery continues in the US today, although some states have abolished it recently (though there is litigation in some of those states over it being continued in practice despite the recent formal abolition.)
pvg 1y ago
Trucktober and Frappuccino aren't "real words" but most Americans know what they mean. The unfamiliarity with Juneteenth is not due to the unrealness of the word.
- loughnane 1y ago
  Both of those are portmanteau's, giving hints as to their meaning. No such thing with Juneteenth. I agree lack of familiarity isn't because it's "unreal"---we invent words all the time, but I agree with OP that we could have come up with a better name. I bet if you I were to walk down the street here and ask 10 people what Juneteenth is only 1 would be able to do better than: "something to do with freeing the slaves".
  - pvg 1y ago
    Juneteenth is the same sort of portmanteau as Trucktober. Plus holidays have weird names. What's a Christmas, a Mardi Gras, a Festivus? It's almost entirely a matter of usage and familiarity.
    - delecti 1y ago
      I mean, Christ Mass is also the same sort of portmanteau. And as an aside, I was curious about Festivus. Apparently it's Latin for "excellent, jovial, lively."
      - pvg 1y ago
        You're pre-qualified for the Feats of Strength but not, so far, for the Airing of Grievances.
      - Izkata 1y ago
        Origin of Festivus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njzgXSzA-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njzgXSzA-A The writer of this episode based it on something from his family that his father did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oeu2cVABHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oeu2cVABHg
kreetx 1y ago
While I'm from EU and didn't know either then Juneteenth seems to be well known enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure less than 1% of people in the EU would know what Juneteenth means. I didn't remember either. I just remembered I read it somewhere before and would have guessed it was something like pi day or star wars day.
  - bilbo0s 1y ago
    Why would anyone in Europe, know when the slaves in the US were freed? Or even when the slaves in Brazil were freed? Or Peru? Or Colombia? Or Cuba? I mean won't every nation have its own history and important days? And it seems to me that those days in every nation will be different. I'd even wager very few of us, (far less than 1%), know what those important days are called in other nations.
- deleted 1y ago
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tenebrisalietum 1y ago
- It's in a dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Juneteenth https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Juneteenth. - At least one local bank website I've gone to today has a banner saying it is closed and uses the word "Juneteenth." This seems to be reasonable enough to consider it a real word. Additionally, the term "Emancipation Day" is inaccurate (and therefore obfuscatory) because slavery is still legal and constitutional if you are convicted of a crime. Emancipation doesn't accurately describe the current state unless this is no longer true. I'm going by this dictionary definition of "emancipation": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emancipation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emancipation
- _9ptr 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure you're making a political point but: How are criminals enslaved? Who owns them?
  - ryanmcbride 1y ago
    The prisons. I mean more specifically the state or federal government ultimately but the prisons more practically. The 13th amendment specifically carves out an exception to allow prisoners to be enslaved. They aren't just using political rhetoric: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause You know in movies and cartoons and stuff when you'd see like, a whole bunch of prisoners in striped pajamas, chained together breaking rocks or digging ditches or whatever? Those are depictions of an enslaved workforce.
    - _9ptr 1y ago
      Forced labor for criminals isn't the same as being a slave. They are not owned by the state. We have a similar sounding exception clause in Germany, and nobody would call the prisoners slaves. That being said, I don't doubt that the american prison systems has severe problems, for example the one raised in the other answer to my previous comment.
      - 1y ago
lukas099 1y ago
> The Black community began using the word Juneteenth for Jubilee Day early in the 1890s. [1] I thought it was a neologism until I looked it up. Turns out, I'm just white. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth
- zzrrt 1y ago
  It is an old neologism, but the style feels surprisingly modern, and/or AAVE is so dominant today that even (youngish?) white people would have coined this type of abbreviation today. > on June 19, 1866… "Jubilee Day" > The Black community began using the word Juneteenth for Jubilee Day early in the 1890s.
- downboots 1y ago
  https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=Juneteenth https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e...
  - lukas099 1y ago
    Cool! Seems about what I'd expect for an initially illiterate, persecuted minority's culture-specific holiday.
    - blackqueeriroh 1y ago
      Just to be clear, Africans had writing, reading, mathematics, science, medicine, and more millennia before Europeans did. [1] [1] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020113/great-achievements-in-stem-in-ancient-africa https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020113/great-achie...
      - lukas099 1y ago
        Yes, good addition—and in case it wasn’t clear, I was talking about how most slaves weren’t allowed to learn to read or write.
John23832 1y ago
Not to be snarky, but they should just learn what it means? I could just as easily not know what emancipation means. I frankly have some family members that I'm sure don't.
jrm4 1y ago
I cannot possibly disagree with this more, "Juneteenth" is far superior. Part of it is that it absolutely invokes AAVE. It forces people to consider and be reminded of Black American culture; "Emancipation Day" whitewashes the history a little bit and gives a little too much credit to the so-called "emancipators." Let's keep this centered on Black folks, where it belongs. Invoking questions is a feature, not a bug.
- bobxmax 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - yusefnapora 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - tomluyer 1y ago
      Yes. And those who believe everything on the internet are not igonorant. If its there it must be true!
      - ok_dad 1y ago
        Don’t use strawman arguments mixed with sarcasm, it doesn’t help anyone. Not everything on the internet is a lie or propaganda. Wikipedia is reliable enough to lookup what Juneteenth is, if you were really curious and not just complaining about the name.
        tomluyer 1y ago
        Theres no straw man arugement here. The fact is everything is on the internet. Telling someone their ignorant because its on the internet is a half truth. Its like saying I graduated from Harvard and therefore I had the best education money could buy and theres no way i'm ignorant. The straw was the ignorant comment and not providing what it is why it should be celebrated by Americans.
tempaway43563 1y ago
argument about naming conventions is exactly what I expected to find on hn
- antonymoose 1y ago
  It’s not just an argument of name, it’s an argument of when. Go down to Charleston, SC where the local black population celebrates Emancipation Day on January 1st and has for a long, long time. Juneteenth is in that context as artificial a holiday as Kwanza. I would imagine most other southern states have similar breaks with the Juneteenth holiday, in that it doesn’t represent the historical reality of their community.
  - deleted 1y ago
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nodesocket 1y ago
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- acdha 1y ago
  You might not have heard about it before then but it’s been celebrated since the Reconstruction era and it became a state holiday starting with Texas in 1938, making it roughly as old as Veterans’ Day.
chgs 1y ago
Thank you. As a non American I have no idea what it means - only knew something was up because the us markets didn’t seem to be moving.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  Why should the names of American holidays mean something to non-Americans? Would you know what Thanksgiving meant without looking it up?
deleted 1y ago
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Grimblewald 1y ago
I didn't know what emancipation day is, but could have guessed and wouldn't have looked. Like you said, I have no idea what the fuck juneteenth is, and so I clicked and now know more about this facet of American history than I would have otherwise.
justin66 1y ago
> Lots of people don't know what "Juneteenth" means, since it's not a real word. The federal holiday was called "Juneteenth" because the existing celebration which it formalizes in law was called "Juneteenth." Renaming it would have been weird.

by sfblah 1y ago

I substantially prefer the term "Emancipation Day," as it gets the point across more clearly. Lots of people don't know what "Juneteenth" means, since it's not a real word.

deleted 1y ago

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ryanmcbride 1y ago

Well they've got plenty of time to learn. As far as I know most people consider Emancipation Day the day that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law in 1863, whereas Juneteenth marks the day 2.5 years later that the last known enslaved people were freed from the people who decided to just not tell them about the law.

ghastmaster 1y ago
This is not true. The last slaves in the United States were set free by the thirteenth amendment in Delaware, IIRC. Emancipation Day could make sense as the last slaves freed by the emancipation proclamation took place on that date. General Order No. 3 - June 19, 1865 Thirteenth Amendment - December 6, 1865 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3#Misconcept... Text: A common misconception holds that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, or that the General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, marked the end of slavery in the United States. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified and proclaimed in December 1865, was the article that made slavery illegal in the United States nationwide, not the Emancipation Proclamation.[6][7][8][9] Another common misconception is that it took over two years for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas, and that slaves did not know they had already been freed by it. In fact, news of the Proclamation had reached Texas long before 1865, and many slaves knew about Lincoln's order emancipating them, but they had not been freed since the Union army had yet to reach Texas to enforce the Proclamation. Only after the arrival of the Union army and General Order No. 3 was the Proclamation widely enforced in Texas.
- lukas099 1y ago
  In my opinion, we still have slaves in the USA. (In prison, as explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment)
- ryanmcbride 1y ago
  Interesting thanks for the information. Regardless, people have been calling it Juneteenth for over a hundred years, it was made a national holiday as Juneteenth, I'm gonna keep calling it that.
  - ghastmaster 1y ago
    In Texas and maybe celebrated in other places(I haven't done the research) this is true. For a large swath of the United States it was obscure or unknown. Most of us learned about the Emancipation Proclamation though. Making Juneteenth a holiday rather than the Date of the Emancipation Proclamation is odd to me. It is as odd to me as say, celebrating Independence Day on the date the last colony got word of the signing on, hypothetically, July 5th.
- stirfish 1y ago
  >The last slaves in the United States were set free by the thirteenth amendment Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. You may be surprised to learn that, coincidentally, America has more people in prison than anywhere else.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mateo411 1y ago
  The Emancipation Proclamation freed very few slaves. The order did not apply to areas of the Union which still had slaves, nor did it apply to areas of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. Although, it did apply to unoccupied areas of the Confederacy. The government of the Confederacy was unlikely to follow an order issued by the Union during the Civil War. It may have encouraged some slaves in the Confederacy to flee, if they found out about it.
ImJamal 1y ago
Did the Emancipation Proclamation actual emancipate anybody? The South didn't free them and the proclamation explicitly allowed the Northern states that had slavery to continue to have slaves.
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  Not to put too fine a point on it, but maybe that's why black Americans celebrate Juneteenth instead? Kind of makes sense to me.
  - mistrial9 1y ago
    African-Americans in coastal California for the most part do not care about Juneteenth.. African-American politicians do try to get a photo op. A very large majority of low income African-Americans in North and Southern California, do not care about this day, do not mention it, do not do special events for it, do not mark it on any calendar or gather with special clothes on for it. compare and contrast to "Kwanzaa" also source: been there, done that
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > Black Americans in coastal California do not care about Juneteenth.. Some do, some don't. "Black Americans in Coastal California" aren't a homogenous group, and this varies a lot by things like family geographic history, socioeconomic status, and a variety of other factors. Source: Also been there, also done that.
      - bilbo0s 1y ago
        Sorry, what do you guys mean by "been there, done that"? Do you mean that you're slave descended black americans, and, in the case of HN User mistrial9, therefore speak for most of the slave descended black americans in coastal California? Or do you guys mean that you celebrate Juneteenth. Thus, "been there, done that"? The former I would challenge you on, despite obviously not being "black american coastal Californian?". The latter I would never challenge you on as that's your business.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> Juneteenth marks the day 2.5 years later that the last known enslaved people were freed Nope, just the last in the Confederate States; the last Union chattel slaves (e.g., in Delaware) were freed by operation of law a few months later with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. (And that's not even discussing penal slavery allowed under the 13th Amendment.)
- TremendousJudge 1y ago
  >(And that's not even discussing penal slavery allowed under the 13th Amendment.) To expand on this, knowingbetter did an in-depth video on this topic[0]. The salient bit is that penal slavery was ended in 1941-1942 by Roosevelt, so that the Japanese couldn't use it as war propaganda against the US. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > the salient bit is that penal slavery was ended in 1941-1942 by Roosevelt, No, convict leasing, one of several manifestations of penal slavery, was (formally) ended by Roosevelt then. Penal slavery continues in the US today, although some states have abolished it recently (though there is litigation in some of those states over it being continued in practice despite the recent formal abolition.)

pvg 1y ago

Trucktober and Frappuccino aren't "real words" but most Americans know what they mean. The unfamiliarity with Juneteenth is not due to the unrealness of the word.

loughnane 1y ago
Both of those are portmanteau's, giving hints as to their meaning. No such thing with Juneteenth. I agree lack of familiarity isn't because it's "unreal"---we invent words all the time, but I agree with OP that we could have come up with a better name. I bet if you I were to walk down the street here and ask 10 people what Juneteenth is only 1 would be able to do better than: "something to do with freeing the slaves".
- pvg 1y ago
  Juneteenth is the same sort of portmanteau as Trucktober. Plus holidays have weird names. What's a Christmas, a Mardi Gras, a Festivus? It's almost entirely a matter of usage and familiarity.
  - delecti 1y ago
    I mean, Christ Mass is also the same sort of portmanteau. And as an aside, I was curious about Festivus. Apparently it's Latin for "excellent, jovial, lively."
    - pvg 1y ago
      You're pre-qualified for the Feats of Strength but not, so far, for the Airing of Grievances.
    - Izkata 1y ago
      Origin of Festivus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njzgXSzA-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njzgXSzA-A The writer of this episode based it on something from his family that his father did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oeu2cVABHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oeu2cVABHg

kreetx 1y ago

While I'm from EU and didn't know either then Juneteenth seems to be well known enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth.

_9ptr 1y ago
I'm pretty sure less than 1% of people in the EU would know what Juneteenth means. I didn't remember either. I just remembered I read it somewhere before and would have guessed it was something like pi day or star wars day.
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  Why would anyone in Europe, know when the slaves in the US were freed? Or even when the slaves in Brazil were freed? Or Peru? Or Colombia? Or Cuba? I mean won't every nation have its own history and important days? And it seems to me that those days in every nation will be different. I'd even wager very few of us, (far less than 1%), know what those important days are called in other nations.
deleted 1y ago
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tenebrisalietum 1y ago

- It's in a dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Juneteenth https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Juneteenth. - At least one local bank website I've gone to today has a banner saying it is closed and uses the word "Juneteenth." This seems to be reasonable enough to consider it a real word. Additionally, the term "Emancipation Day" is inaccurate (and therefore obfuscatory) because slavery is still legal and constitutional if you are convicted of a crime. Emancipation doesn't accurately describe the current state unless this is no longer true. I'm going by this dictionary definition of "emancipation": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emancipation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emancipation

_9ptr 1y ago
I'm pretty sure you're making a political point but: How are criminals enslaved? Who owns them?
- ryanmcbride 1y ago
  The prisons. I mean more specifically the state or federal government ultimately but the prisons more practically. The 13th amendment specifically carves out an exception to allow prisoners to be enslaved. They aren't just using political rhetoric: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause You know in movies and cartoons and stuff when you'd see like, a whole bunch of prisoners in striped pajamas, chained together breaking rocks or digging ditches or whatever? Those are depictions of an enslaved workforce.
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    Forced labor for criminals isn't the same as being a slave. They are not owned by the state. We have a similar sounding exception clause in Germany, and nobody would call the prisoners slaves. That being said, I don't doubt that the american prison systems has severe problems, for example the one raised in the other answer to my previous comment.
    - 1y ago

lukas099 1y ago

> The Black community began using the word Juneteenth for Jubilee Day early in the 1890s. [1] I thought it was a neologism until I looked it up. Turns out, I'm just white. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth

zzrrt 1y ago
It is an old neologism, but the style feels surprisingly modern, and/or AAVE is so dominant today that even (youngish?) white people would have coined this type of abbreviation today. > on June 19, 1866… "Jubilee Day" > The Black community began using the word Juneteenth for Jubilee Day early in the 1890s.
downboots 1y ago
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=Juneteenth https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e...
- lukas099 1y ago
  Cool! Seems about what I'd expect for an initially illiterate, persecuted minority's culture-specific holiday.
  - blackqueeriroh 1y ago
    Just to be clear, Africans had writing, reading, mathematics, science, medicine, and more millennia before Europeans did. [1] [1] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020113/great-achievements-in-stem-in-ancient-africa https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020113/great-achie...
    - lukas099 1y ago
      Yes, good addition—and in case it wasn’t clear, I was talking about how most slaves weren’t allowed to learn to read or write.

John23832 1y ago

Not to be snarky, but they should just learn what it means? I could just as easily not know what emancipation means. I frankly have some family members that I'm sure don't.

jrm4 1y ago

I cannot possibly disagree with this more, "Juneteenth" is far superior. Part of it is that it absolutely invokes AAVE. It forces people to consider and be reminded of Black American culture; "Emancipation Day" whitewashes the history a little bit and gives a little too much credit to the so-called "emancipators." Let's keep this centered on Black folks, where it belongs. Invoking questions is a feature, not a bug.

bobxmax 1y ago
[flagged]
- yusefnapora 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomluyer 1y ago
    Yes. And those who believe everything on the internet are not igonorant. If its there it must be true!
    - ok_dad 1y ago
      Don’t use strawman arguments mixed with sarcasm, it doesn’t help anyone. Not everything on the internet is a lie or propaganda. Wikipedia is reliable enough to lookup what Juneteenth is, if you were really curious and not just complaining about the name.
      - tomluyer 1y ago
        Theres no straw man arugement here. The fact is everything is on the internet. Telling someone their ignorant because its on the internet is a half truth. Its like saying I graduated from Harvard and therefore I had the best education money could buy and theres no way i'm ignorant. The straw was the ignorant comment and not providing what it is why it should be celebrated by Americans.

tempaway43563 1y ago

argument about naming conventions is exactly what I expected to find on hn

antonymoose 1y ago
It’s not just an argument of name, it’s an argument of when. Go down to Charleston, SC where the local black population celebrates Emancipation Day on January 1st and has for a long, long time. Juneteenth is in that context as artificial a holiday as Kwanza. I would imagine most other southern states have similar breaks with the Juneteenth holiday, in that it doesn’t represent the historical reality of their community.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

nodesocket 1y ago

[flagged]

acdha 1y ago
You might not have heard about it before then but it’s been celebrated since the Reconstruction era and it became a state holiday starting with Texas in 1938, making it roughly as old as Veterans’ Day.

chgs 1y ago

Thank you. As a non American I have no idea what it means - only knew something was up because the us markets didn’t seem to be moving.

pessimizer 1y ago
Why should the names of American holidays mean something to non-Americans? Would you know what Thanksgiving meant without looking it up?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Grimblewald 1y ago

I didn't know what emancipation day is, but could have guessed and wouldn't have looked. Like you said, I have no idea what the fuck juneteenth is, and so I clicked and now know more about this facet of American history than I would have otherwise.

justin66 1y ago

> Lots of people don't know what "Juneteenth" means, since it's not a real word. The federal holiday was called "Juneteenth" because the existing celebration which it formalizes in law was called "Juneteenth." Renaming it would have been weird.