What is the true meaning of Juneteenth?
I find that most conversations around Pride center around the communal, the political, the commercial, the exceptional. It tracks within a simplistic breakdown of the path towards equality. You start with the personal, a narrative to help someone empathize and connect. Then you build towards the communal, people bound together over some sort of sameness that to society equates to difference. In doing so a recognition grows that the issues are systemic, so the communal pushes for the political. Political recognition, protection, freedom. All this movement comes with the reclamation of joy and celebration in the face of the worlds insistence on shame. It comes with the reclamation of yourself as a part of the communal because of the political in beautifully loud and exuberant ways that can then be co-opted by the commercial, erasing some of the struggle that came before. It becomes grand and joyous and exceptional.