How White People Can Honor Juneteenth

I've quietly celebrated Juneteenth for over 35 years. I'd casually mention it to friends but I still kept to my private life on the white side of town. I thought it was enough that I was one of very few white people who even knew what Juneteenth was - I was special, different, savvy, therefore, not racist.

I am better informed now through reading, listening, and learning from Black voices. I cannot afford the luxury of wallowing in shame. I've learned that carrying shame and guilt as a white person only perpetuates the othering of People of Color. I've learned that I have been conditioned and socialized to see society through a white-only lens. If I walk around hanging my head about that, I'm not helping anybody. What I can do is walk upright with humility, and help dismantle a system I had nothing to do with creating in the first place. If I do nothing, then I remain complicit.

How White People Can Honor Juneteenth:

Reflect and learn. Use this day to examine what it means to be white in America and how that shapes our experience differently from Black Americans. 

Commit to Educating Yourself. A few suggestions: "Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram X. Kendi (a life changer for me); "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson; “You Mean it or You Don’t - James Baldwin’s Radical Challenge” by Jamie McGhee and Adam Hollowell; “White Fragility” by Robin Diangelo.

Listen more than you speak. When attending a public celebration, come as a respectful observer. Center Black voices and stories.

Support Black-led organizations. Make donations to groups working for racial justice, especially those led by Black communities.

Engage white networks. Have conversations with other white people about Juneteenth's significance and ongoing racial inequities. It is our responsibility to educate and help each other understand our whiteness and privilege, not Black people’s responsibility to explain it to us. 

Commit beyond today. Juneteenth isn't a one-day event—it's a reminder of ongoing work. What will I do tomorrow and next month to challenge racism?

Remember the history. June 19, 1865 marked delayed freedom—enslaved people in Texas learning two years late that they were free. This delay itself tells a story about how information and liberation have been controlled.