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Someone got mad at me today because I said "we beat slavery" was I accidentally dog whistling? It's just how I thought about it. I guess "white people" did beat it but also "white people" were doing it. We kind of beat it as a country is what I meant. Idk my family wasn't even here yet but I'm just happy there isn't slavery.
You are being actively obtuse here, which is understandable if perhaps you're taking almostgotcaught's comments as a direct attack on you. (which it most likely isn't)
If you looked at the adjacent comments you would immediately see a combination of "western christian values," and open pondering that "Epstein is an Israeli asset. Democrats and Republicans have loyalty to Israel." This alone is enough dog whistling for at least my neighborhood's dogs to start acting up.
Sorry, It wasn't a rhetorical device, it actually happened to me today. I'm not taking either "side", I thought it might explain something I didn't understand. 100% legitimately.
Someone once tried to make the argument to me that African Americans should feel eternal gratitude toward whites for fighting a war to free them. The fact of the matter is that America is one of the very few countries in history to fight a war to keep slavery.
This type of reductionist take is unhelpful no matter who is making it. We can have a bunch of free states, with whites and blacks fighting for abolition as far back as the founding, and a bunch of slave states fighting for slavery.
Trying to flatten the situation into one general group vs another cannot explain the complexity of the situation, like the fact that there were black and mixed-race slave owners, or that Delaware fought for the Union Army despite being a slave state.
They had a war to keep slavery because there was a strong movement to abolish it. Most countries in the world didn’t have strong movements to abolish slavery like we did. Mostly due to Christian movements.
China, Korea had slavery well into the 20th century and had no major conflicts because they didn’t have Christian abolitionist movements.
Idk why so many people are upset or arguing. Sorry to add to the noise but I’m a naturalized citizen here and I feel like USA has so much history of doing better and moving things forward for everyone.
People all operate independently in thought here, but somehow since 1776 they have genuinely pushed society forward all things considered.
Everyone acting out of self interest but in a direction where things get better, objectively speaking, makes it a good society.
It is superior to living under dictatorships, corruption rotted “democracies”, or religious intolerance where the people always lose.
USA is nice if you like pew pew or freedom of speech, which to be fair are pretty fucking awesome. But if you just want a nice life, and possibly even more free economic opportunities, someplace like Dubai is way more accessible (esp if Indian or Chinese, etc) and you can have a good life. That is if you can stomach having absolutely no political power instead of next to none, and you can keep your mouth shut about dear leaders.
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.
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.
Ah, just like Easter, Christmas, Ramadan, Fat Tuesday, Valentine's Day, Purim, Holi, Passover, Cinco De Mayo, D-Day, etc. etc. etc.
Observances regularly don't give you a clue what they are about. Like, if you weren't already aware about Martin Luther King, Jr. day, you'd have to Google it to know what's up. Same with Rosh Hashana. Or Eid. I think you might be getting stuck on something that is demonstrably not a unique phenomena and it's reading a little like there's something about Juneteenth itself that's bothering you.
What you have just told me is a FEATURE. Not a BUG.
I'm very GOOD with people "not immediately knowing." I like that. It forces them to learn about my people and culture.
"Juneteenth" makes you step in and perhaps get a little uncomfortable, like, hmm weird little Black-sounding phrase?
"Emancipation Day" frees (lol) you from engaging, you can just sort of take on the same ol same ol story, which, I imagine for many people starts with Abraham Lincoln and not Black people.
I didn't realize "Juneteenth" was considered "Black-sounding" by some people. Juneteenth is a pretty culturally mainstream term (being a national holiday). And forming new words using contractions doesn't seem like a typically Black-person thing to do.
I associate the term with Black people, not because of how it sounds, but because I know what it means and know about it's origin among formerly-enslaved Black communities.
Maybe you mainly heard it said by black people, so it just sounds black to you? Whereas someone who heard about it on Twitter in 2015 wouldn't have made the same subconscious association, even if it's explicitly about celebrating freeing black people from slavery.
Oh, no. It sounds black because it is black. Check the history. "Juneteenth" the term was absolutely invented by black folks. I'm just finding it interesting that it "doesn't sound black to others."
I had this conversation with a group of people today and literally not one of them knew its true origin and the word never propelled them to look into it further. They just assumed (correctly) that someone came up with the name because it’s in June and the nineTEENTH day, but they didn’t realize the term was actually used long ago.
So take from that anecdote what you will, but I’ll admit the name kind of has a modern sound and I don’t think it spurs the kind of curiosity that you hope it does.
Also, FWIW, the name “Emancipation Day” is also a commonly used name for the holiday, though not as common as Juneteenth.
"Emancipation Day" is way too ambiguous in the US because there are already several other days that are called "Emancipation Day" in various states [1].
They mostly all have something to do with the ending of slavery but it is different things in different states. For example in Massachusetts it is on July 8th and commemorates slavery being found to be legally unenforceable there under in a 1783 decision.
I mean... you could just look it up, if you didn't know. Plenty of places have obscurely-named holidays (for instance, a number of countries have Whit Monday as a holiday; good luck figuring out what _that_ is from the name...)
Also, if Serbia has some holidays that I can't recognize when I read them from a calendar, should Serbia change the names of them for me? Or is it only the words that black Americans use that aren't real when random people don't recognize them?
Do you want people to associate AAVE with the term? I'm not quite finding the right term but it seems "unprofessional", in a sense.
It would be like advocating for Christmas Day to be formally recognised as "Chrisso" or "Chrissie" here in Australia. Yeah we all informally call it that, but it would be embarrassing to codify it.
I do, and this is a far bigger discussion than I can get into here -- but it's about respecting/understanding Black American cultural contributions ..
.. which is hard because when you start making accounts of them you begin to realize how universal and yet unrecognized so many of our contributions are.
It doesn't help that, in the fervour to amplify black contributions, there is a lot of embellishment, appropriation, and even outright lies, often at the expense of White pioneers. I know we won't agree on this point, yourself clearly being a proud black man and myself a proud White man, but that is the sense that I have around this topic now. If I'm being frank, I find that I am conditioned at this point to treat these claims with a great amount of suspicion, as they often appear to be motivated more so by racial interests than historical accuracy.
The western, Christian values explicitly had slavery in them. The slave owners were Christian. I don't really see how religion has to do with the abolishment of race-based slavery, sadly.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.
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.
Nah it’s really easy to understand Juneteenth if you just google it. Let’s not argue on the fringes of the subject and claim it applies here. Ignorant people always have excuses for why it’s too hard to become educated on a simple subject.
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By people in a small community in Texas and nowhere else. No one elsewhere heard of this thing till now. Now everyone pretends it's a big deal but it was strictly a local event there. You never heard of it till Biden's group brought it up. I bet I'm older than you (the reader). I never heard of this till Biden brought it up.
This holiday is beyond stupid when you consider that the guy who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln, doesn't have a Federal holiday where one gets the day off.
EDIT: Now that I've had my time for my "shower thoughts": Why is there no national holiday for the American Indian? They were here first. Mistreated and kicked out of the areas they occuplied. A wonderful culture with a wonderful history but no mention anywhere on the calendar?
> I bet I'm older than you (the reader). I never heard of this till Biden brought it up.
I'm in my mid-50s, maybe you are older than me. It's something I had heard about in the 2015-2020 timeframe. I'm white as fuck, but being online meant I saw tweet threads or short explainers about it for a few years. I didn't meet folks who celebrated it, but when I asked around to Black folks I knew they were like, "Yeah, it's a thing."
So I suspect that the holiday gained momentum among Black Americans and spread out from Texas sometime prior to me hearing about it, perhaps with the rise of social media, and then us folks who are out of the loop started hearing about it later. (Either through our own social media intake or through the declaration of a federal holiday.)
> This holiday is beyond stupid when you consider that the guy who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln, doesn't have a Federal holiday where one gets the day off.
> just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean it's not real.
This style of commenting is not allowed on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. It's a clear breach of the guidelines that ask us to avoid swipes and name-calling.
We've had to ask you several times to correct this kind of conduct here. If it keeps up, we'll have to ban the account.
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.
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.
> 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.)
>(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.
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
Yes it did. When the Northern army was in Southern territory they would free the local slaves. They would then recruit volunteers into the army. Not sure how many they freed but they did pick up about 200k soldiers that way.
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
> 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.
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.
> Black AF takes place in California and the main character had a huge celebration with his entire extended family before it was even a federal holiday.
Did you just use the fact that Black characters in fictional media set in California celebrated the holiday to contradict an argument that actual Black people in coastal California do not?
I mean, the claim was factually wrong, but that's the worst counterargument imaginable.
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.
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".
Agree it’s a silly nitpick of language. I’ll keep picking.
Picturing a frappe and cappuccino gives you a sense for what a Frappuccino _is_. Picturing june and thirteenth/nineteenth only gives you sense for _when_ it is.
In only contend a better name would be one where the name suggests something about the content to someone hearing it for the first time.
Another American holiday coming up with an equally useless name is Fourth of July. Nobody seems to have a problem with that name, and nobody I know calls it Independence Day. Neither Fourth of July or Juneteenth are great names out of context, but they both have histories behind them and can't be changed anymore.
Heck, Juneteenth is a better name, since it is not literally month+day.
The name of the holiday, so named by the people affected, is a century and change old. The problem isn't the quality of the name, which is where we started.
I'm white AF and this thread is cringe. "We" didn't name it, for starters. It would take an electron microscope to find the amount of self-awareness to avoid suggesting better alternatives. Damn.
June (nine)teenth, seems pretty straightforward to me. Clearer than All Hallows' Evening --> Halloween.
>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".
And lots of people think Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day, doesn't make the holiday any less valid. It's just an issue of education.
> but that eventually would be sooner with a better name
Do you have some basis for thinking this? I rather suspect the reason White Americans don't know about it has more to do with the fact that it celebrates Black American history and culture, which is just not that popular among White Americans. (Of course there are exceptions, but the point is they're exceptions.) I seriously doubt that the name is the problem. The problem is that relatively few people are interested.
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.
I’m not dying on this hill, I just think the name could be better, but I don’t particularly care. It’s not as though I’ve got a beef with the celebrating the freedom of slaves. I think that’s essential for America to celebrate.
It's simply important, while celebrating slavery, to correct the way that black people speak. Just so they'll be understood. Just so they'll know that regular people don't talk like that.
I don't know what your point is. You know Frappaccino? So his point stands? Regardless of his examples, we deal with no end of made up nonsense words, rarely anybody bats an eye until it sounds black and has to do with black people.And yes, this is a thing, this thread is the umpteenth one I've encountered today with people undermining and questioning the name for what amounts to it sounding black.
So your anecdote isn't useful. Kind of the opposite.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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
Here's an article, the power relationship was exercised by denying parole that would have otherwise been granted without a profit motive:
https://archive.ph/0gVie
"Since 2018, about 575 companies and more than 100 public agencies in Alabama have used incarcerated people as landscapers, janitors, drivers, metal fabricators and fast-food workers, the lawsuit states, reaping an annual benefit of $450 million."
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.
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.
The text of the 13th amendment makes a direct equivalence between the chattel slavery it outlawed and the incarcerated forced labor that it left unaffected:
> 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
The plain reading of that text is that slavery remains a permitted punishment in the US.
We Americans don't like doing that either, because it makes us uncomfortable.
>Forced labor for criminals isn't the same as being a slave. They are not owned by the state.
I'm having trouble understanding how it's different. They are held by the state, forced to work, are not free to leave, and we have a bit of a history...
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.
>I just cannot believe people can just fly the confederate flag and not be thrown into prison or worse. Same with Nazis.
Yeah, this is how things like freedom of expression and free speech clauses to the constitution work, they prohibit imprisoning ("or worse") people for displaying symbols of their preference, just because you don't like them, even if they're racist, as long as they're not actually committing violence against others.
Does your "or worse" refer to torturing people for these things perhaps? Congratulations, you're about as shitty as any garden variety authoritarian, racist or not.
We have a president doing his best to winnow down the 1st amendment against his particular brand of dislike, and on the other hand idiocies like what you demand doing it from another end. In both cases, emotionally claiming that what they want to restrict is "dangerous".
>If a house divided will inevitably fall, then certainly, a house that tolerates people advocating destruction of the house will also fall.
If your notion of a house divided means anyone not sharing your worldview then being imprisoned ("or worse"), it's you, or people like you who are really the problem in a country where it's exactly the kind of authoritarian bullshit you vomit that has been largely rejected by centuries of constitutional protections.
We can look to German society for an alternative balance on the principles of free speech and Nazism. Germany isn't doing too bad as a society in terms of individual liberty and prosperity. One might argue they're better governed than any particular state in the US, or the US overall.
Germans also understand Nazis better than the US and they decided their democracy doesn't need it.
Modern Germany has its fair share of problems with how the state can define permitted speech and use it to censor selectively. Since the legacy of the Nazi era is still there, along with the legacy of the Stasi era, German society and government are generally careful to not go overboard on certain things, but this would apply either way. Does anyone really think that the only thing stopping the resurgence of Nazism is a law prohibiting swastikas and certain kinds of speech? No, it's a general social tendency towards avoiding strong authoritarian trends, based on some of the worst historical experience possible.
In essence, these laws don't really "help" anyhow in terms of stopping any serious movement toward extremism, while on the other hand sometimes selectively being used to censor in completely nonsensical ways.
Also worth noting, historically, it was exactly a fear of letting deeply hated ideological enemies of the country's conservative elements that caused the Weimar conservatives to make justifications for censoring ideologically opposed viewpoints and "protecting the nation" against their definition of treason through laws that created loopholes for authoritarian control. This very same perceived need led them to an alliance with the Nazis and the formation of the Hitler cabinet of 1933, after which the much more extreme Hitler used the same legal loopholes -so easily exploitable by serious authoritarians- to completely destroy the Weimar Republic and all of its existing political, social and individual freedoms.
The so-called paradox of tolerance is bullshit. It was specifically intolerance and legal mechanisms for its expression against supposedly extreme viewpoints, that destroyed Weimar Germany and led to Nazi Germany. I have yet to see a country where too much free expression leads to more repression. The exact opposite is the case everywhere you look. Politicians and ideologues establish "reasonable" limits on extremist speech and later expand those ever more censoriously as they redefine extremism or treason to include anything that supposedly divides the nation, ie: goes against their views of a unified political system.
Nah, if your freespeech involves treason and rebellion you no longer have rights.
No, "worse" meant capital punishment (the universal punishment for that crime). The only good traitor is a dead traitor. Don't betray your country. Don't fly the flags of its enemies. I am fine with a moderate punishment (1-2 years in prison), I just expected society to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.
If you conspire to kill someone or rob a bank, that's a conspiracy charge. if you run around dressed and armed like a militia and wearing confederate flags, threatening race wars, then it's free speech. that makes no sense.
This isn't an unpopular sentiment outside the US as you think. I like germany's approach to the problem. the punishment isn't severe but just enough. Try the nazi salute in germany or flying the nazi flag and you'll see what happens.
Your argument is a logical fallacy (slipperly slope). No, I am not suggesting arbitrary banning of arbitrary symbols and flags I dislike, there is no slippery slope. If an entity is declared an enemy of the united states by the democratically elected government of the united states, then you don't get to fly its flags on american soil without consequence. You don't get to fly ISIS or al-qaeda flags just the same as confederate and nazi flags. I am not against flying random KKK or white supremacist flags (well I am, I just don't think that should be illegal). Displaying symbols or making speech in advocacy of a declared enemy of your country shouldn't be legal.
If the checks and balances of government allow Trump to declare an entity enemy of the state then yeah, you can't fly their flags either. That's how democracy works, don't elect people who are not trustworthy. The constitution is not a religion and freedom of speech means nothing without a stable country to administer it.
Being intolerant to some speech is necessary for the preservation of free speech. Free speech doesn't mean you get to say anything without consequence (can't yell fire in a crowd, I'd say rebellion is worse than that!).
Treason and rebellion is worse than mass murder! that's our disconnect. you see it as an opinion, I see it as something so horrific that I wouldn't be all that upset if the person's precious life (and even in case of murder I don't support capital punishment, except for extreme cases) was taken from them. War and the death of millions of innocents is what I equate treason and rebellion with, and not just death but so much human suffering that lasts decades (see the misery of post-civil-war reconstruction!).
> Nah, if your freespeech involves treason and rebellion you no longer have rights
Do that and you can guarantee that it’ll be used against you. I abhor people who fly those flags, I’ll personally stomp their faces, but the government shouldn’t be allowed to stop them or else your run into the issue of what treasonous speech is. I firmly believe the people (society in general) should hold all of the power when it comes to policing speech.
Like I said, this isn't arbitrary, if I start flying the flags of my country's enemies, then like any other law it should apply to me. Who gets to decide who the enemy is? The democratically elected legislators and officials. Plenty of countries with better free-speech and free-press protections than the US ban things like this, holocaust denial, etc... it isn't a slippery slope.
Right now, the 'enemies' of the democratically elected leaders are Democrats and Socialists. You think jail time for being a member of the DSA is reasonable? That's democracy working as intended? (That said, the US is not a democracy, and it's really important to remember that, because we do value some votes more highly than others and put significant barriers in place to prevent everyone from voting.)
That's not a slippery slope, the admin is on the record saying that socialists are their enemies. I don't want to give them the power to go after anyone who might be a socialist. Especially when they are carting people off to death camps in foreign countries.
Sorry for ignorance but I have no idea what the DSA is.
That said, you hit it on the nail when you said the US isn't a democracy. that's only half way true but let's fix that! If the we're not a democracy then free speech still means nothing either way. US citizens are being abducted and disappeared in broad daylight, what free speech do you have when that can happen to you?
But if democracy is working right, and that is the premise I made my original statement under, and we owe allegiance to our country than explicit and outright betrayal of your country isn't free speech. it is exactly what it is and should be treated as such. Anything short of that falls under the half-measure bucket I mentioned earlier. It is nursing a festering wound until it causes sepsis and kills the whole body.
I would even argue that the loss of democracy you're talking about has to do with the culture of half-measures. Protests that affect or risk nothing, people being outraged but not acting on it (voting or more). Tolerating nazis under "free speech" is why there are nazis running the country right now. These people should have been buried under prisons a long time ago.
>The only good traitor is a dead traitor. Don't betray your country. Don't fly the flags of its enemies.
In essence, you're an authoritarian moron, shitting out justifications for vicious repression under the name of protecting against extremists. There's already no shortage of this same foolish nonsense being bayed and barked for by Trump's supporters against their supposed "enemies of the nation" on the progressive left or by anyone who doesn't lock-step support their half-baked policies.
These same people quickly label anyone who disagrees with them on various things as a traitor and really, so much of that boils down to exactly what you foolishly claim you don't support, which is banning X arbitrary things one dislikes. You can yammer as much as you like about how stupid slippery slope arguments are, but their justifications absolutely do exist, especially when applied based on the ridiculous criteria by which you seem to hatefully enjoy defining the idea of treason and fantasizing about how'd you love to see supposed traitors executed.
There's more rehashed stupidity to unpack in the rest of your comment, but why bother?
No, we should not let the state decide -based on often ideological, nationalistic or simply corrupt criteria- what thoughts, symbols or expressions of opinion by people are suddenly treason. Those enforcing such things have historically, almost inevitably slid towards authoritarianism and those supporting such things as members of the public tend to make their own slide towards applauding nationalistic idiocy.
That's likely a reference to the show "Cuties" which was a rage-provocateur for awhile.
I cannot make assertions about the show, only that I am passingly familiar with the internet's larger distaste for the show based on allegations of exploitation of minors.
Oh wow, I've even seen this movie, and I didn't pick up on what they were referring to. I vaguely remember some controversy, and being unable to get worked up about it. Thanks for reminding me.
Happy Juneteenth! A reminder that we can change as a country. May we never have to liberate by war again.
It wasn't just changing a country. It was changing a long, long human tradition.
The value system and moral framework of the abolishinists spanned beyond the confines of country.
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Technically correct, but there are 1 million nicer ways to make your point.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You're missing that it's a dog whistle - we should not be nice. Look at this person's adjacent comments here.
> we should not be nice
It's not about being nice, but on Hacker News we operate according to guidelines and norms that have evolved over more than 15 years, which keep discussions focused on substance and prevent it from burning to the ground the way most online communities do.
Please do your part to make this place better not worse. The point you made above was a valid and valuable one, but the way you expressed it means its value is lost.
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Anyone can act as though their position is righteous enough, and their opponent's is pernicious enough, that an exception should be made in their case. But it's only because enough people make an effort to avoid that that HN can continue to exist as a place where people want to come and discuss important topics.
If someone else's comment is wrong, respond with an opposing argument. If their comment is inflammatory or in some other way in breach of the guidelines, flag it, and/or report it to us via email. We have several ways of keeping discussion healthy here, but we need everyone to do their part.
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Someone got mad at me today because I said "we beat slavery" was I accidentally dog whistling? It's just how I thought about it. I guess "white people" did beat it but also "white people" were doing it. We kind of beat it as a country is what I meant. Idk my family wasn't even here yet but I'm just happy there isn't slavery.
You are being actively obtuse here, which is understandable if perhaps you're taking almostgotcaught's comments as a direct attack on you. (which it most likely isn't)
If you looked at the adjacent comments you would immediately see a combination of "western christian values," and open pondering that "Epstein is an Israeli asset. Democrats and Republicans have loyalty to Israel." This alone is enough dog whistling for at least my neighborhood's dogs to start acting up.
Sorry, It wasn't a rhetorical device, it actually happened to me today. I'm not taking either "side", I thought it might explain something I didn't understand. 100% legitimately.
There's still open slave markets in 2025
Someone once tried to make the argument to me that African Americans should feel eternal gratitude toward whites for fighting a war to free them. The fact of the matter is that America is one of the very few countries in history to fight a war to keep slavery.
A quote I like from Wynton Marsalis: "with race in America it's never just black against white. It's always black and white against white."
This type of reductionist take is unhelpful no matter who is making it. We can have a bunch of free states, with whites and blacks fighting for abolition as far back as the founding, and a bunch of slave states fighting for slavery.
Trying to flatten the situation into one general group vs another cannot explain the complexity of the situation, like the fact that there were black and mixed-race slave owners, or that Delaware fought for the Union Army despite being a slave state.
What will really blow your mind is what former slaves forged for in Liberia, after finding freedom for themselves.
And we never actually ended slavery, we just changed the rules on how to enslave people (ie we must imprison them first).
North Africa fought against the US to keep their slave trade.
They had a war to keep slavery because there was a strong movement to abolish it. Most countries in the world didn’t have strong movements to abolish slavery like we did. Mostly due to Christian movements.
China, Korea had slavery well into the 20th century and had no major conflicts because they didn’t have Christian abolitionist movements.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_abolitionism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce
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It is. It's crazy how everyone loves to criticize and hate on America yet clamor to be there.
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Sure, whatever.
But surely you're not just deaf and blind to the mass allure for those other ~2.5m people a year who decide to come here.
The US runs a pretty big cultural show in modern culture. If you can look outside your own country at all, you've heard of the US.
But there are plenty of better places to be depending on what you value.
The EU gets 4 million immigrants per year, so what is exactly your point?
Happy Juneteenth
Idk why so many people are upset or arguing. Sorry to add to the noise but I’m a naturalized citizen here and I feel like USA has so much history of doing better and moving things forward for everyone.
People all operate independently in thought here, but somehow since 1776 they have genuinely pushed society forward all things considered.
Everyone acting out of self interest but in a direction where things get better, objectively speaking, makes it a good society.
It is superior to living under dictatorships, corruption rotted “democracies”, or religious intolerance where the people always lose.
USA is nice if you like pew pew or freedom of speech, which to be fair are pretty fucking awesome. But if you just want a nice life, and possibly even more free economic opportunities, someplace like Dubai is way more accessible (esp if Indian or Chinese, etc) and you can have a good life. That is if you can stomach having absolutely no political power instead of next to none, and you can keep your mouth shut about dear leaders.
There are some wonderful photos and stories here, salute to the people at Texas Highways for putting this together.
From the article:
"The day was dubbed Emancipation Day but, slowly, the term Juneteenth — a portmanteau of June and 19th — took hold."
Debating the name instead of appreciating the holiday and gravity of the topic is missing the forrest for the trees. Just wow.
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They’re all made up.
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.
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.
> Part of it is that it absolutely invokes AAVE. It forces people to consider and be reminded of Black American culture
If you don't already know what "Juneteenth" means, the word itself gives you nothing to help you understand. Literally zilch. It involkes nothing.
"Emancipation Day" does give the outsider a clue.
Names matter.
Ah, just like Easter, Christmas, Ramadan, Fat Tuesday, Valentine's Day, Purim, Holi, Passover, Cinco De Mayo, D-Day, etc. etc. etc.
Observances regularly don't give you a clue what they are about. Like, if you weren't already aware about Martin Luther King, Jr. day, you'd have to Google it to know what's up. Same with Rosh Hashana. Or Eid. I think you might be getting stuck on something that is demonstrably not a unique phenomena and it's reading a little like there's something about Juneteenth itself that's bothering you.
The UK just gave up and named them "Late May Bank Holiday".
Again. GOOD GOOD GOOD.
What you have just told me is a FEATURE. Not a BUG.
I'm very GOOD with people "not immediately knowing." I like that. It forces them to learn about my people and culture.
"Juneteenth" makes you step in and perhaps get a little uncomfortable, like, hmm weird little Black-sounding phrase?
"Emancipation Day" frees (lol) you from engaging, you can just sort of take on the same ol same ol story, which, I imagine for many people starts with Abraham Lincoln and not Black people.
I didn't realize "Juneteenth" was considered "Black-sounding" by some people. Juneteenth is a pretty culturally mainstream term (being a national holiday). And forming new words using contractions doesn't seem like a typically Black-person thing to do.
I associate the term with Black people, not because of how it sounds, but because I know what it means and know about it's origin among formerly-enslaved Black communities.
That's super interesting. I'm not why my assumptions are different, perhaps because I'm black and 48 years old?
Maybe you mainly heard it said by black people, so it just sounds black to you? Whereas someone who heard about it on Twitter in 2015 wouldn't have made the same subconscious association, even if it's explicitly about celebrating freeing black people from slavery.
Oh, no. It sounds black because it is black. Check the history. "Juneteenth" the term was absolutely invented by black folks. I'm just finding it interesting that it "doesn't sound black to others."
I had this conversation with a group of people today and literally not one of them knew its true origin and the word never propelled them to look into it further. They just assumed (correctly) that someone came up with the name because it’s in June and the nineTEENTH day, but they didn’t realize the term was actually used long ago.
So take from that anecdote what you will, but I’ll admit the name kind of has a modern sound and I don’t think it spurs the kind of curiosity that you hope it does.
Also, FWIW, the name “Emancipation Day” is also a commonly used name for the holiday, though not as common as Juneteenth.
"Emancipation Day" is way too ambiguous in the US because there are already several other days that are called "Emancipation Day" in various states [1].
They mostly all have something to do with the ending of slavery but it is different things in different states. For example in Massachusetts it is on July 8th and commemorates slavery being found to be legally unenforceable there under in a 1783 decision.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Day#United_States
I mean... you could just look it up, if you didn't know. Plenty of places have obscurely-named holidays (for instance, a number of countries have Whit Monday as a holiday; good luck figuring out what _that_ is from the name...)
Do Thanksgiving.
Also, if Serbia has some holidays that I can't recognize when I read them from a calendar, should Serbia change the names of them for me? Or is it only the words that black Americans use that aren't real when random people don't recognize them?
> "Emancipation Day" does give the outsider a clue.
shall we also rename shabbat and yom kippur and purim so that "outsiders" can have a clue?
people are so tone deaf sometimes - it's not for you - it's for the people whose ancestors were freed on this day.
> the word itself gives you nothing to help you understand
neither does any other word that you don't bother to look up in dictionary or encyclopedia.
Actually, I guess we have! Notice how you typed "shabbat" and not "שבת". Much easier to Google.
Do you want people to associate AAVE with the term? I'm not quite finding the right term but it seems "unprofessional", in a sense.
It would be like advocating for Christmas Day to be formally recognised as "Chrisso" or "Chrissie" here in Australia. Yeah we all informally call it that, but it would be embarrassing to codify it.
I do, and this is a far bigger discussion than I can get into here -- but it's about respecting/understanding Black American cultural contributions ..
.. which is hard because when you start making accounts of them you begin to realize how universal and yet unrecognized so many of our contributions are.
It doesn't help that, in the fervour to amplify black contributions, there is a lot of embellishment, appropriation, and even outright lies, often at the expense of White pioneers. I know we won't agree on this point, yourself clearly being a proud black man and myself a proud White man, but that is the sense that I have around this topic now. If I'm being frank, I find that I am conditioned at this point to treat these claims with a great amount of suspicion, as they often appear to be motivated more so by racial interests than historical accuracy.
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I'm unaware of a large non-Christian population living in the Confederate States of America.
The western, Christian values explicitly had slavery in them. The slave owners were Christian. I don't really see how religion has to do with the abolishment of race-based slavery, sadly.
Which values explicitly supported slavery?
I've been told that I wear the mark of Cain, so
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery
Slave owners would cite Ephesians 6:5-6.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.
I legitimately can't tell if this is satire.
Anyway, as a Black Christian, I always tell people on both sides -- know what religion is most responsible for slavery in the US?
Christianity.
And also, know what religion is most responsible for freedom for Black folks in the Us?
Also Christianity.
It's just complicated.
Not "western" of course, but the traditions/organization of Black churches.
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Yes. And those who believe everything on the internet are not igonorant. If its there it must be true!
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.
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.
Nah it’s really easy to understand Juneteenth if you just google it. Let’s not argue on the fringes of the subject and claim it applies here. Ignorant people always have excuses for why it’s too hard to become educated on a simple subject.
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I get that you're reasonably new here, but we need you to understand that this style of commenting on Hacker News is unacceptable. It's not what the site is for and it destroys what it is for. Please read and observe the guidelines, particularly these ones:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
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Sure, apologies.
> America's latest attempt at making themselves feel better about their barbaric cultural history
This isn't a new phenomena. Juneteenth has been celebrated for well over a hundred years now.
By people in a small community in Texas and nowhere else. No one elsewhere heard of this thing till now. Now everyone pretends it's a big deal but it was strictly a local event there. You never heard of it till Biden's group brought it up. I bet I'm older than you (the reader). I never heard of this till Biden brought it up.
This holiday is beyond stupid when you consider that the guy who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln, doesn't have a Federal holiday where one gets the day off.
EDIT: Now that I've had my time for my "shower thoughts": Why is there no national holiday for the American Indian? They were here first. Mistreated and kicked out of the areas they occuplied. A wonderful culture with a wonderful history but no mention anywhere on the calendar?
> I bet I'm older than you (the reader). I never heard of this till Biden brought it up.
I'm in my mid-50s, maybe you are older than me. It's something I had heard about in the 2015-2020 timeframe. I'm white as fuck, but being online meant I saw tweet threads or short explainers about it for a few years. I didn't meet folks who celebrated it, but when I asked around to Black folks I knew they were like, "Yeah, it's a thing."
So I suspect that the holiday gained momentum among Black Americans and spread out from Texas sometime prior to me hearing about it, perhaps with the rise of social media, and then us folks who are out of the loop started hearing about it later. (Either through our own social media intake or through the declaration of a federal holiday.)
> This holiday is beyond stupid when you consider that the guy who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln, doesn't have a Federal holiday where one gets the day off.
Don't see why we can't have both.
The American ethnocentrism is real and in FORCE when racism is involved. Not surprising for an American holiday relevant only to Americans.
Genuinely curious--what's a country that doesn't have a barbarous cultural history?
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> jesus christ you people are so thick:
> just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean it's not real.
This style of commenting is not allowed on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. It's a clear breach of the guidelines that ask us to avoid swipes and name-calling.
We've had to ask you several times to correct this kind of conduct here. If it keeps up, we'll have to ban the account.
Lol ban me I'll just make another account (and I know you guys think you have just the best fingerprinting tech but newsflash you do not :)
> 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://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e...
>I'm just white
What's that supposed to mean?
Presumably "It's just that I'm white and was therefore hadn't been exposed to this tradition."
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.
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.
> 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.)
>(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
> 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.)
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#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.
In my opinion, we still have slaves in the USA. (In prison, as explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment)
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.
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.
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.
Just stop. Better is better. Let’s celebrate progress and not thump Wikipedia.
>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.
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.
Yes it did. When the Northern army was in Southern territory they would free the local slaves. They would then recruit volunteers into the army. Not sure how many they freed but they did pick up about 200k soldiers that way.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
It's a federal holiday now so there eventually will be a tradition around the whole country.
Black AF takes place in California and the main character had a huge celebration with his entire extended family before it was even a federal holiday.
> Black AF takes place in California and the main character had a huge celebration with his entire extended family before it was even a federal holiday.
Did you just use the fact that Black characters in fictional media set in California celebrated the holiday to contradict an argument that actual Black people in coastal California do not?
I mean, the claim was factually wrong, but that's the worst counterargument imaginable.
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.
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".
How is "Juneteenth" any less of a portmanteau than "Frappuccino"?
It's been called Juneteenth for more than a century, and has been a state holiday for almost half a century.
Wouldn't it be even more ridiculous if the US federal government took an existing celebration and renamed it?
There both portmanteau but Frappuccino combines two things you can envision. A date doesn’t unless the association already existed.
Regardless of its history I venture that 95% of the population hadn’t heard the word before 2020, so it’s not like it was in the public consciousness.
You’re right though, even if almost joined knew about it, it _did_ have a name and so def tough to change it.
A June and a -teenth is no harder to envision than a Frapp and a CCino. It's a silly tangent.
Agree it’s a silly nitpick of language. I’ll keep picking.
Picturing a frappe and cappuccino gives you a sense for what a Frappuccino _is_. Picturing june and thirteenth/nineteenth only gives you sense for _when_ it is.
In only contend a better name would be one where the name suggests something about the content to someone hearing it for the first time.
Another American holiday coming up with an equally useless name is Fourth of July. Nobody seems to have a problem with that name, and nobody I know calls it Independence Day. Neither Fourth of July or Juneteenth are great names out of context, but they both have histories behind them and can't be changed anymore.
Heck, Juneteenth is a better name, since it is not literally month+day.
The name of the holiday, so named by the people affected, is a century and change old. The problem isn't the quality of the name, which is where we started.
Wait until you hear about September through December not being the 7th through 10th months of the year.
They don’t even give you a sense for _when_ they are. Or, more accurately, they give you the _wrong_ sense for when they are by name alone.
Wait until you hear about Cinco De Mayo!
In the case of Frappuccino, many people care. In the other case, most people don't care.
I'm white AF and this thread is cringe. "We" didn't name it, for starters. It would take an electron microscope to find the amount of self-awareness to avoid suggesting better alternatives. Damn.
June (nine)teenth, seems pretty straightforward to me. Clearer than All Hallows' Evening --> Halloween.
>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".
And lots of people think Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day, doesn't make the holiday any less valid. It's just an issue of education.
I’m not saying the holiday isn’t valid, I think it’s a great holiday. The name is all I take exception to.
Eventually we’ll all know what it is, but that eventually would be sooner with a better name.
> but that eventually would be sooner with a better name
Do you have some basis for thinking this? I rather suspect the reason White Americans don't know about it has more to do with the fact that it celebrates Black American history and culture, which is just not that popular among White Americans. (Of course there are exceptions, but the point is they're exceptions.) I seriously doubt that the name is the problem. The problem is that relatively few people are interested.
The really striking thing is how poorly the name distinguishes the date from the seven days before it...
Ju(ne) n(in)eteenth! :D
>And lots of people think Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day,
Probably because it has the same sort of bad name as Juneteenth.
>ask 10 people what Juneteenth is only 1 would be able to do better than: "something to do with freeing the slaves".
That shouldn't be considered a naming failure. It's an education failure.
Ask the same 10 people what "Emancipation Day" is and you'll have 7 or 8 people say the same thing even though it's not even an actual holiday.
It’s both. The name Juneteenth requires more education than, say, emancipation day or something along those lines.
Easy names require less “education” than hard names.
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.
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."
Origin of Festivus: 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
You're pre-qualified for the Feats of Strength but not, so far, for the Airing of Grievances.
Yeah, people get their knickers in a twist about Juneteenth but will say "February" like that makes complete sense.
This is such a weird hill to die on
I’m not dying on this hill, I just think the name could be better, but I don’t particularly care. It’s not as though I’ve got a beef with the celebrating the freedom of slaves. I think that’s essential for America to celebrate.
It's simply important, while celebrating slavery, to correct the way that black people speak. Just so they'll be understood. Just so they'll know that regular people don't talk like that.
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White guy here, and I have never heard of "Trucktober"..
I'm also going to my local Juneteenth events (in Oakland).. that said, I did have to look it up a few years ago.
EDIT: Yeah, downvote me, I replied to the wrong sub-thread post. Made more sense w/r/t resistance to Juneteenth naming.
I have never heard of "Trucktober"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPBaC6VPuU
You must be some sort of communist! There's a Trucktober question on the naturalization test, right before the one about Thanksgiving.
I don't know what your point is. You know Frappaccino? So his point stands? Regardless of his examples, we deal with no end of made up nonsense words, rarely anybody bats an eye until it sounds black and has to do with black people.And yes, this is a thing, this thread is the umpteenth one I've encountered today with people undermining and questioning the name for what amounts to it sounding black.
So your anecdote isn't useful. Kind of the opposite.
While I'm from EU and didn't know either then Juneteenth seems to be well known enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth.
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.
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.
argument about naming conventions is exactly what I expected to find on hn
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.
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.
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.
Why should the names of American holidays mean something to non-Americans? Would you know what Thanksgiving meant without looking it up?
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.
- It's in a dictionary: 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
I'm pretty sure you're making a political point but: How are criminals enslaved? Who owns them?
Here's an article, the power relationship was exercised by denying parole that would have otherwise been granted without a profit motive: https://archive.ph/0gVie
"Since 2018, about 575 companies and more than 100 public agencies in Alabama have used incarcerated people as landscapers, janitors, drivers, metal fabricators and fast-food workers, the lawsuit states, reaping an annual benefit of $450 million."
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
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.
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.
The text of the 13th amendment makes a direct equivalence between the chattel slavery it outlawed and the incarcerated forced labor that it left unaffected:
> 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
The plain reading of that text is that slavery remains a permitted punishment in the US.
I don't know much about constitutional law, either german or american, but I know you often can't just "plain read" the text.
> Forced labor for criminals isn't the same as being a slave.
The difference is so slight as to be meaningless.
That's cool but I'm not talking about Germany.
> nobody would call the prisoners slaves.
We Americans don't like doing that either, because it makes us uncomfortable.
>Forced labor for criminals isn't the same as being a slave. They are not owned by the state.
I'm having trouble understanding how it's different. They are held by the state, forced to work, are not free to leave, and we have a bit of a history...
It’s the “convicted of a crime” part that makes it different.
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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.
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>I just cannot believe people can just fly the confederate flag and not be thrown into prison or worse. Same with Nazis.
Yeah, this is how things like freedom of expression and free speech clauses to the constitution work, they prohibit imprisoning ("or worse") people for displaying symbols of their preference, just because you don't like them, even if they're racist, as long as they're not actually committing violence against others.
Does your "or worse" refer to torturing people for these things perhaps? Congratulations, you're about as shitty as any garden variety authoritarian, racist or not.
We have a president doing his best to winnow down the 1st amendment against his particular brand of dislike, and on the other hand idiocies like what you demand doing it from another end. In both cases, emotionally claiming that what they want to restrict is "dangerous".
>If a house divided will inevitably fall, then certainly, a house that tolerates people advocating destruction of the house will also fall.
If your notion of a house divided means anyone not sharing your worldview then being imprisoned ("or worse"), it's you, or people like you who are really the problem in a country where it's exactly the kind of authoritarian bullshit you vomit that has been largely rejected by centuries of constitutional protections.
We can look to German society for an alternative balance on the principles of free speech and Nazism. Germany isn't doing too bad as a society in terms of individual liberty and prosperity. One might argue they're better governed than any particular state in the US, or the US overall.
Germans also understand Nazis better than the US and they decided their democracy doesn't need it.
Modern Germany has its fair share of problems with how the state can define permitted speech and use it to censor selectively. Since the legacy of the Nazi era is still there, along with the legacy of the Stasi era, German society and government are generally careful to not go overboard on certain things, but this would apply either way. Does anyone really think that the only thing stopping the resurgence of Nazism is a law prohibiting swastikas and certain kinds of speech? No, it's a general social tendency towards avoiding strong authoritarian trends, based on some of the worst historical experience possible.
In essence, these laws don't really "help" anyhow in terms of stopping any serious movement toward extremism, while on the other hand sometimes selectively being used to censor in completely nonsensical ways.
Also worth noting, historically, it was exactly a fear of letting deeply hated ideological enemies of the country's conservative elements that caused the Weimar conservatives to make justifications for censoring ideologically opposed viewpoints and "protecting the nation" against their definition of treason through laws that created loopholes for authoritarian control. This very same perceived need led them to an alliance with the Nazis and the formation of the Hitler cabinet of 1933, after which the much more extreme Hitler used the same legal loopholes -so easily exploitable by serious authoritarians- to completely destroy the Weimar Republic and all of its existing political, social and individual freedoms.
The so-called paradox of tolerance is bullshit. It was specifically intolerance and legal mechanisms for its expression against supposedly extreme viewpoints, that destroyed Weimar Germany and led to Nazi Germany. I have yet to see a country where too much free expression leads to more repression. The exact opposite is the case everywhere you look. Politicians and ideologues establish "reasonable" limits on extremist speech and later expand those ever more censoriously as they redefine extremism or treason to include anything that supposedly divides the nation, ie: goes against their views of a unified political system.
Nah, if your freespeech involves treason and rebellion you no longer have rights.
No, "worse" meant capital punishment (the universal punishment for that crime). The only good traitor is a dead traitor. Don't betray your country. Don't fly the flags of its enemies. I am fine with a moderate punishment (1-2 years in prison), I just expected society to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.
If you conspire to kill someone or rob a bank, that's a conspiracy charge. if you run around dressed and armed like a militia and wearing confederate flags, threatening race wars, then it's free speech. that makes no sense.
This isn't an unpopular sentiment outside the US as you think. I like germany's approach to the problem. the punishment isn't severe but just enough. Try the nazi salute in germany or flying the nazi flag and you'll see what happens.
Your argument is a logical fallacy (slipperly slope). No, I am not suggesting arbitrary banning of arbitrary symbols and flags I dislike, there is no slippery slope. If an entity is declared an enemy of the united states by the democratically elected government of the united states, then you don't get to fly its flags on american soil without consequence. You don't get to fly ISIS or al-qaeda flags just the same as confederate and nazi flags. I am not against flying random KKK or white supremacist flags (well I am, I just don't think that should be illegal). Displaying symbols or making speech in advocacy of a declared enemy of your country shouldn't be legal.
If the checks and balances of government allow Trump to declare an entity enemy of the state then yeah, you can't fly their flags either. That's how democracy works, don't elect people who are not trustworthy. The constitution is not a religion and freedom of speech means nothing without a stable country to administer it.
Being intolerant to some speech is necessary for the preservation of free speech. Free speech doesn't mean you get to say anything without consequence (can't yell fire in a crowd, I'd say rebellion is worse than that!).
Treason and rebellion is worse than mass murder! that's our disconnect. you see it as an opinion, I see it as something so horrific that I wouldn't be all that upset if the person's precious life (and even in case of murder I don't support capital punishment, except for extreme cases) was taken from them. War and the death of millions of innocents is what I equate treason and rebellion with, and not just death but so much human suffering that lasts decades (see the misery of post-civil-war reconstruction!).
> Nah, if your freespeech involves treason and rebellion you no longer have rights
Do that and you can guarantee that it’ll be used against you. I abhor people who fly those flags, I’ll personally stomp their faces, but the government shouldn’t be allowed to stop them or else your run into the issue of what treasonous speech is. I firmly believe the people (society in general) should hold all of the power when it comes to policing speech.
Like I said, this isn't arbitrary, if I start flying the flags of my country's enemies, then like any other law it should apply to me. Who gets to decide who the enemy is? The democratically elected legislators and officials. Plenty of countries with better free-speech and free-press protections than the US ban things like this, holocaust denial, etc... it isn't a slippery slope.
Either you have faith in democracy or you don't.
Right now, the 'enemies' of the democratically elected leaders are Democrats and Socialists. You think jail time for being a member of the DSA is reasonable? That's democracy working as intended? (That said, the US is not a democracy, and it's really important to remember that, because we do value some votes more highly than others and put significant barriers in place to prevent everyone from voting.)
That's not a slippery slope, the admin is on the record saying that socialists are their enemies. I don't want to give them the power to go after anyone who might be a socialist. Especially when they are carting people off to death camps in foreign countries.
Sorry for ignorance but I have no idea what the DSA is.
That said, you hit it on the nail when you said the US isn't a democracy. that's only half way true but let's fix that! If the we're not a democracy then free speech still means nothing either way. US citizens are being abducted and disappeared in broad daylight, what free speech do you have when that can happen to you?
But if democracy is working right, and that is the premise I made my original statement under, and we owe allegiance to our country than explicit and outright betrayal of your country isn't free speech. it is exactly what it is and should be treated as such. Anything short of that falls under the half-measure bucket I mentioned earlier. It is nursing a festering wound until it causes sepsis and kills the whole body.
I would even argue that the loss of democracy you're talking about has to do with the culture of half-measures. Protests that affect or risk nothing, people being outraged but not acting on it (voting or more). Tolerating nazis under "free speech" is why there are nazis running the country right now. These people should have been buried under prisons a long time ago.
>The only good traitor is a dead traitor. Don't betray your country. Don't fly the flags of its enemies.
In essence, you're an authoritarian moron, shitting out justifications for vicious repression under the name of protecting against extremists. There's already no shortage of this same foolish nonsense being bayed and barked for by Trump's supporters against their supposed "enemies of the nation" on the progressive left or by anyone who doesn't lock-step support their half-baked policies.
These same people quickly label anyone who disagrees with them on various things as a traitor and really, so much of that boils down to exactly what you foolishly claim you don't support, which is banning X arbitrary things one dislikes. You can yammer as much as you like about how stupid slippery slope arguments are, but their justifications absolutely do exist, especially when applied based on the ridiculous criteria by which you seem to hatefully enjoy defining the idea of treason and fantasizing about how'd you love to see supposed traitors executed.
There's more rehashed stupidity to unpack in the rest of your comment, but why bother?
No, we should not let the state decide -based on often ideological, nationalistic or simply corrupt criteria- what thoughts, symbols or expressions of opinion by people are suddenly treason. Those enforcing such things have historically, almost inevitably slid towards authoritarianism and those supporting such things as members of the public tend to make their own slide towards applauding nationalistic idiocy.
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>Netflix
>-Content featuring the sexual exploitation of children
What?
Edit: I see the parent has been flagged and removed, so I assume it was nothing
That's likely a reference to the show "Cuties" which was a rage-provocateur for awhile.
I cannot make assertions about the show, only that I am passingly familiar with the internet's larger distaste for the show based on allegations of exploitation of minors.
Oh wow, I've even seen this movie, and I didn't pick up on what they were referring to. I vaguely remember some controversy, and being unable to get worked up about it. Thanks for reminding me.