Joe Biden — who declared Juneteenth a federal holiday — celebrates Juneteenth.

At the Reedy Church, yesterday, in Galveston, Texas:

"Delaware is a strange state. Delaware is the first state, but it also is a state that was a slave state, by great shame. But it fought on the side of the North, and it didn't get to the South like Maryland and two other states. And so even when the when we did Juneteenth, didn't affect people in Delaware because they weren't they weren't in the Confederacy nor the Confederate. Wasn't until the Emancipation Proclamation was occurred. What I'm trying to say is that uh I uh I I just learned a lot in the community and uh that's where I worked on East Side that's why I worked as a lawyer and that's why I got involved in public life...."

The actual fact he didn't even approach is that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't abolish slavery in Delaware. It took the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery in Delaware, so on Juneteenth — June 19, 1865 — the Delaware slaves were still slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment was not ratified until December 6, 1865. 

But here's Joe Biden in Galveston on Juneteenth, talking about Delaware, calling it a strange state, and not getting anywhere near what's so strange about Delaware that relates to Juneteenth.

Meanwhile, President Trump "celebrated" Juneteenth by writing this on Truth Social: "Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don’t want it either! Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

A history of the weekend.

I'm reading the Wikipedia article "Workweek and weekend":

A continuous seven day cycle that runs throughout history, paying no attention whatsoever to the phases of the moon and having a fixed day of rest, was most likely first practised in Judaism, dated to the 6th century BC at the latest.

In Ancient Rome (753 BC–476 AD), every eight days there was a nundinae. It was a market day, during which children were exempted from school and agricultural workers stopped work in the field and came to the city to sell the produce of their labor or to practice religious rites.

The French Revolutionary Calendar (1793–1805) had ten-day weeks (called décades) and allowed décadi, one out of the ten days, as a leisure day.

Celebrating Father's Day...

... is that still something we do? 

How long do you think it will continue, this archaic convention?

A very special selection of TikTok videos for you today. Let me know what you like.

1. Bob Dylan sings "Happy Birthday" to Brian Wilson! (Wilson turns 80 today. Dylan preceded him in octogenarianism by 1 year, so he knows whereof he sings. Perhaps I should also mention that Paul McCartney turned 80 two days ago. Let us marvel at the greatness of octogenarian men! Thanks for hanging on all these years, o, fabulous heroes!)

2. Pieface. Not a pie in the face. A pie face.

3. One lady crosses the street in the flood, so shouldn't the second lady?

4. How you pass someone on a hiking trail compared to how your dad does.

5. "If European Americans were the cultural other: Performative Holiday Merch Edition."

6. The Italian husband is told "Use your noodle."

7. The way Mike Wallace spoke to Maria Callas in 1974.

8. Do you mean to tell me there are people who use washcloths?

9. The way department stores talk to each other.

Tomorrow is Juneteenth, the newest national holiday: How should we celebrate it?

I'm not sure if "celebrate" is even the right word.

When I google my question, I also see "honor." How do we "honor Juneteenth"? People must sense that "celebrate" is wrong — too festive, too joyful and fun? — because they're not seeing that it's wrong to speak of "honoring" a holiday. It's not the holiday that is honored, the holiday honors something, and you wouldn't say you are honoring the honoring. 

At CNN, I'm seeing "Ways to celebrate and serve Juneteenth." Serve? Is the holiday our master? Juneteenth marks an escape from servitude. Why would we — how would we — serve this occasion? And yet we often speak of observing a holiday. I take a long break to research the prefix "ob-" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

But enough about language. The question is are we going to celebrate Juneteenth?

"I think on its face, the ice cream that Walmart attempted to sell at best feels performative and exploitative..."

"... in part because Juneteenth is a holiday that signals celebration of liberation, and this feels like an empty symbol rather than a meaningful gesture that companies the size of Walmart could have made to the Black community across the United States in celebration of Juneteenth.... I think that it’s really in the spirit of Juneteenth to ensure that they are doing things that are meaningful for the advancement of both their Black employees and their Black consumers and also where there are avenues for that—even investments in small Black-owned businesses. Juneteenth was once an obscure holiday... As it’s getting renewed attention and visibility, I hope that companies will find ways to mark the historic significance of the holiday and not larger performative gestures like what we are seeing here with Walmart and other companies."

Said Timothy Welbeck, an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Africology and African American Studies and acting director of the Center for Anti-racism Research at Temple University, quoted in "Learning from Walmart’s Juneteenth marketing mistake/Timothy Welbeck, acting director of the Center for Anti-racism Research, believes companies must develop more meaningful ways to observe the occasion rather than capitalizing off the holiday commercially" (Temple Now).

So you want to celebrate Juneteenth? What foods do you serve?

An IKEA store in Georgia sent out this email, the NY Post reports: 

“To honor the perseverance of Black Americans and acknowledge the progress yet to be made, we observe Juneteenth on Saturday, June 19, 2021. Look out for a special menu on Saturday which will include: fried chicken, watermelon, mac n cheese, potato salad, collard greens, candied yams.”

That, we're told, was "intensely problematic." But what foods would be right? Or is the whole idea of a food-based celebration problematic? Is it enough just to exclude the watermelon? Or is it also the fried chicken? Or is it everything?

We pretty much all know — don't we? — that Juneteenth isn't going to be like St. Patrick's Day. We like to say: "Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day." There's exaggerated Irishness everywhere, and everyone is encouraged to eat the most stereotypically Irish foods and to drink Irish drinks to stereotypically Irish excess. Maybe that needs to be problematized. 

But whatever... obviously Juneteenth isn't going to work like St. Patrick's Day. I hesitate even to type the phrase "Everyone is black on Juneteenth." It's so wrong.

Still: We've got a new holiday. There needs to be a way to celebrate it, unless it's going to be a extension of Black History Month — a somber observance. To celebrate, we'll need foods. But if the attitude is worrying about giving offense, how will it be a celebration? It really is intensely problematic.

The Juneteenth flag.

Are you flying the Juneteenth flag? Is it this flag? 

 

I had a real-life conversation yesterday about flying flags other than the American flag.  If you fly an American flag in front of your house — as we do — do you think that you must always fly that flag and no other flag, that you're interfering with your usual message —or even unpatriotic — if you swap in a different flag some days?

In my neighborhood, which gets parked up on game days — we could get a $20 bill for letting somebody park their car in our driveway — many people put up a motion W or Bucky Badger flag when the team is playing. This month, "Pride" month, I'm seeing some rainbow flags and that complicated beyond-the-rainbow flag (now, with even more inclusivity).

I was saying I'd like to have rainbow flag for June, but that would mean taking the American flag down for an entire month. (I reject the 2-flag solution.) But what about Juneteenth? It's only one day. That makes it more flaggable to those who generally fly the American flag. (And I'll just set to the side the problem of Juneteenth interrupting the gender focus of the month of June, or, to put it another way, the problem of the gender interests having chosen the month that already contained the race-based celebration of Juneteenth).

We can all celebrate Juneteenth. No one objects to the abolition of slavery. (Yes, you can broaden the concept to include all the vestiges of U.S. slavery and slavery everywhere in the world, but people will still readily agree that's all bad, even if they're not going to do anything about it.) 

So: How to celebrate? You could fly a Juneteenth flag. When I think about doing that, I care about what the flag looks like, and I can see that the flag in that video is designed to make it easy for average Americans to see conventional American values. I'm just seeing that flag for the first time this morning. When we were talking about it yesterday, I was picturing this flag:

That's a more challenging flag! But that is not the Juneteenth flag!

That's the Pan-African flag, adopted by the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) at a conference in New York City in 1920. The UNIA drafted and adopted the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World on August 13, 1920 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. It included the declaration that red, black and green (or RBG) be the colors signifying the African race.

That flag has a long history, and I think it's a great looking flag. It's better-looking than the official Juneteenth flag, which — I've got to say — makes me think of Canada. So fly whichever flag you want today or any day or fly no flag at all. It's a free country. Celebrate freedom freely.

Remember when making Juneteenth a national holiday was a Donald Trump campaign promise?

From September 25, 2020: "President Donald Trump made a series of promises at a campaign event in Atlanta on Friday in a bid to woo Black voters, including establishing Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of U.S. slavery, as a federal holiday" (Reuters).

Of course, it was just "a bid to woo Black voters" when Trump promised to do it, but now that the members of Congress and the new President have actually made Juneteenth a national holiday, is anyone minimizing the achievement as pandering to black voters?

And then there was a time — just before Juneteenth last year — when Trump asserted: "I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous." If only Trump were still on Twitter — don't you think he'd be claiming credit for the new holiday? But the truth is, Juneteenth was already a holiday in 47 states (and the District of Columbia) when Trump made his campaign promise last September.

ADDED: I'll answer my own question — "is anyone minimizing the achievement as pandering to black voters?" — with a qualified yes. Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post is minimizing the achievement but only of the Republicans who voted for it: 

"I don’t believe in seedless watermelon — that is against my religion."

Said Gabrielle E.W. Carter, "a multimedia artist and gardener in Apex, N.C.," quoted in "Summer’s Greatest Prize: Watermelons, With Seeds, Please/For many Americans, juicy, scarlet watermelon is a must for Juneteenth. The heirloom varieties are a sacred summer fruit" in The New York Times.

I did not know that it was possible to write an article about black people and watermelon, but here it is.

All season long, you’ll find watermelon eating in its purest form — palms clenching the rinds over gingham tablecloths; all pleasure and no tropes — at family reunions, at get-togethers on terraces and around patio fire pits. Consuming the fruit is a sacrament of an American summer, and, for many Black Americans, a must for Juneteenth, the Texas-born holiday gaining national recognition that’s celebrated with red punch, strawberry spoon cake and dry-rubbed ribs.

On the received wisdom that it's racist to discuss black people and watermelon, here's "How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope" (The Atlantic). 

"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

Yes, Trump said that.*

Yes, it's hyperbole. The "nobody" is outrageous and false. It gets your attention, and it increases the power of his fame-making machine, further inflating the importance of Juneteenth, and further connecting it to Trump, where it never belonged before.

__________________

*Link goes to Jonathan Chait at NY Magazine, quoting this WSJ interview. Chait:

... Trump has caused more people to become aware of Juneteenth, just as he has caused more people to become aware of the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, narcissistic personality disorder, “democratic backsliding,” the two-thirds threshold required for impeachment, and other concepts that had largely been excluded from daily news coverage. This has not been an era of progress. But it has been a time of enlightenment.

What's "democratic backsliding"? I don't remember hearing that phrase before. I see it has a Wikipedia entry: