Juneteenth deserves to be more than a political football

.

On Saturday, I hosted a rally at El Dorado Park attended by an array of community members as diverse as Los Angeles County. As we wholeheartedly celebrate Juneteenth, we continue the hard work it takes to fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of true opportunity for black people, which has not yet manifested in many inner cities dealing with such day-to-day dangers as gang violence and property crime.

It was a positively beautiful day. But the day, I was distressed to find, was marred by partisan bickering elsewhere. So many of my contemporaries on the Right outright condemned our newest national holiday. “Juneteenth is soooo lame. Democrats really need to stop trying to repackage segregation. I’ll be celebrating July 4th and July 4th only. I’m American,” Candace Owens tweeted.

Ben Shapiro claimed that the Left is using this issue to club people into compliance with its racial agenda. Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA went so far as to call Juneteenth an “affront to the unity of July 4th.” He added, “Conservatives must reject this.”

Neither side should be looking to score points on this. Not the Left, for having a Democratic president sign the bill into the law — it was former President Donald Trump who first proposed making Juneteenth a national holiday and brought a great deal of attention to the issue in September 2020.

Not the Right, by thinking that railing against Juneteenth could score more points with certain demographics. In fact, it’s missing an opportunity to appeal to minorities and its base, especially when politicians such as Trump and Rep. Dan Crenshaw have endorsed the holiday. The Right is also refusing to take credit for its own achievements: The Republican Party freed the slaves, after all. But alas, this is clouded by the Right as it focuses too much on knee-jerk reactions to anything and everything the Left does.

In the meantime, I will celebrate this beautiful day, but it’s only a first step to improving our lives.

While the holiday can be an opportunity for unity, we cannot use Juneteenth as an excuse to attack other races. The same day I held my rally with a multicultural audience, I heard others were excluding white people from attending.

You cannot fight racism with racism. For once, let’s put petty political differences aside. Who cares which side gets a “win” for this? It is an amazing win. It is not a competition between #BlackLivesMatter and #StopAsianHate. It is not a cardinal sin for us to address the nuances of race relations, as some on the Right feel. Nuance and understanding are the first steps toward unity. As Americans, let’s all truly celebrate this wonderful new holiday.

Marc Ang ([email protected]) is a community organizer in Southern California and the founder of AsianIndustryB2B.

Related Content

Related Content