Celebrating Juneteenth in "The Year of the Election"
Today, Black people throughout the United States are celebrating the 159th anniversary of Juneteenth, a day that marks the June 19th, 1865, arrival of Major General Gordon Granger to Galveston, Texas, with word of emancipation. “The people are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation of the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free,” Granger said in General Order 3.
Juneteenth is marked by both exuberant joy, and solemn reflection, as it invites the celebration of freedom for formerly enslaved people as well as reflection on the ongoing work to win full freedoms for Black people in the United States.
As Annette Gordon-Reed, historian and author of the Pulitzer-winning book On Juneteenth observes, “Juneteenth is an end and a beginning. It was the end of chattel slavery and the beginning of a struggle, and [Black people] understood that at the time.”
Emancipation Day Celebration band, Texas, June 19, 1900. (Mrs. Charles Stephenson [Grace Murray] / Austin History Center, Austin Public)
Performers in the MAJORHYPE dance company dance as they make their way along the route of a parade held to commemorate Juneteenth on Monday, June 19, 2023, in Boston, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Even as celebrations unfold today, the reality of the forces that seek to—and do—exclude, marginalise and exploit Black people throughout the country remain painfully present. At the same time, vital progressive wins of the last half century, including reproductive rights and affirmative action, have been rolled back by a startlingly partisan Supreme Court.
In what has been dubbed the “Year of the Election”, where U.S. Americans join their peers in at least 64 other countries at the polls, the potential of democratic rights in general and the vote in particular to challenge these harmful patterns takes on new significance.
Efforts to redraw congressional districts, and otherwise constrain access to the vote in ways that disproportionately affect Black people, make the particular significance of the Black vote clear.
“Though laws [related to the vote] have changed, from the Jim Crow era, the vigilance that is required surrounding the protection of rights has actually not changed at all,” observes Keesha Gaskins-Nathan, who is a 2022 Fellow and director of the Democratic Practice–United States Program and the Racial Justice Initiative at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
In the Q and A below, Keesha draws on her work to offer distinctive insight into the status of voting rights in the U.S. She also considers the potential of the vote to deliver freedoms to Black people and the relationship between voting and broader political strategies that allow changemakers to build toward liberated futures.
*The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How would you describe the current state of voting rights in the U.S.?
There's no question that there's a long arc of justice moving towards universal enfranchisement. But, since the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision from the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (the section that required jurisdictions to receive preclearance from the federal government before making changes to electoral processes), we've seen a consistent marching backwards of federal protections for voting rights.
For instance, there is significant variation in mechanisms to access the polls—there are different rules about when to vote, where to vote, what IDs are acceptable, whether you're required to have ID at all, whether you can use an affidavit to vote, or a neighbour can vouch for you to vote. These ways of accessing the polls vary state-by-state and jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction. Often times these mechanisms limiting access to the ballot operate to uniquely limit access to the vote for Black communities and other communities of colour.
We also have polarised politics that tend to scapegoat communities of colour as well. So we saw not so long ago Black poll workers being defamed by Rudy Giuliani and others to elevate a narrative of electoral fraud that sought to delegitimise the 2020 election.
So I would say in terms of the status of voting rights, we continue to have to fight for access to the polls. Though the overall laws have changed, from, say, the Jim Crow era, the vigilance that is required surrounding the protection of rights has actually not changed at all.
A voter casts his ballot at a polling station Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2023, news broke of Republican efforts to suppress votes amongst Black and LatinX communities in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
At the same time, there is a kind of crisis of political disaffection. Poll after poll suggests that there is low engagement/interest in the coming election among Black folks.
Yes, and some of it is long-term disaffection. It's very hard to look at Black folks, Native folks, new Americans, and other folks who are experiencing rampant unfairness and limited access to resources, power, fair and safe systems, safe communities, and be surprised by disaffection.
There’s the reality—and I know that our sisters and brothers in South Africa know this too well—that the presence of a democratic government or the absence of de jure apartheid systems does not automatically deliver equity.
There has also been longstanding frustration with a two-party system that often uses Black people and people of colour to advance political goals without being accountable to deliver meaningful solutions to improve the lived experiences for those same communities.
There’s also the effect of our electoral college, which makes it possible for the losing candidate to win the presidency and form a government, which has happened five times in U.S. history, most recently in 2016. When you look at the total number of eligible voters in the United States in 2016, the way that the largest number of voters expressed their opinion was to not vote at all. The second largest number of votes were for Hillary Clinton, the 3rd was Donald Trump, and he became President. It is very difficult to look at a system that produces these types of outcomes and not understand how people understand and experience disaffection with U.S. elections.
And then, in this current cycle, there's a number of high-salience issues, including the climate crisis, the conflict and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and inflation. Essentially, the current geopolitical, economic, and climate context has generated a sense of disillusionment and makes it really, really hard for many people to say, “I feel good about casting a ballot for either side.”
“It's very hard to look at …folks who are experiencing rampant unfairness and limited access to resources, power, fair and safe systems, safe communities, and be surprised by disaffection.”
How would you describe the stakes of the moment amid these trends?
The challenge right now in the United States is that we are on the precipice of deep authoritarian power. There’s the inequity built into U.S. democratic processes, like the electoral college, which create asymmetrical outcomes that go against the will of the majority.
There’s also the shrinking ability to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. So, we have the Supreme Court, which is designed to serve as an undemocratic check on power. Judges are appointed, rather than elected, a process that is intentionally undemocratic because the system assumes that majorities can run amuck, and you want something to be a check on their power.
What you don't want though, is for the Supreme Court to be anti-democratic. You don't want it to actually undermine the ability of government to function. But if there are no ethical standards, if the very appointment of the judges is done through political machinations, and not through fair and equitable processes, an institution that is designed to be a positive check on abuse of political power instead turns into an anti-democratic institution that limits people’s faith in democracy, which in turn leads to political disaffection, even where people are fully enfranchised and have the right to vote.
Put together the threat of greater authoritarianism, justified lack of faith in democratic institutions, political disaffection at a large scale and you end up with a very volatile political situation, which is where the United States rests today.
Given all of this, where do we go from here?
We sit in a moment where voting rights and access to the ballot continue to be utterly essential and, in the absence of voter participation at the polls—particularly the participation of people of colour—there really isn't much evidence that we'll be able to avoid this steady march towards authoritarianism.
So, there is an urgency to equal and fair access to the ballot and to voters taking advantage of access to their own power.
Do I hear the challenges and inconsistencies? Can I sit here as a Black, queer woman in the United States and be like “Just go out and vote, and everything is going to be okay?” If you hear me saying that, I'm not saying it right. That is not what I mean to say at all. I’m saying that the vote is one of the levers of power that we have to continue to pull as we continue to protest, as we continue to design alternative systems, as we continue to fight against structural racism, as we continue to fight against sexism and ageism, as we continue to look at and reject the principles of patriarchy as we try and disentangle our future from late-stage capitalism. These are all things that we have to continue to do, to fight, to reach meaningful equity.
What are you keeping your eye on as the election draws closer?
Part of what I think is a little bit crazy about this moment is that the authoritarian threat to the United States is real and undeniable. It is also both the greatest and least problem that we have.
What do I mean? In the short term, it's the greatest problem we have. If we're not able to beat back this immediate authoritarian threat, it is going to make everything else that got us here worse. So we’ll see greater corporate capture of our regulatory processes and legislative processes. We’ll see people distanced from their access to levers of power. These trends that are reducing access to rights—bodily rights, reproductive rights, voting rights—will worsen.
That being said, the four big tectonic shifts that define our moment—climate disasters and climate impacts, the disappearance of the middle class and other impacts of late-stage capitalism, evolving technology and artificial intelligence, and failure of democratic governance models globally will persist regardless of the electoral outcome in November.
There is also the way in which persistent anti-Black racism and the ability to leverage it throughout any political conflict (and the flip side of that, the inability to talk about the impact of whiteness and how it shows up in the world), severely limits our ability to navigate the current political context toward our future.
These are all deep, deep issues that were here before the election, and will continue to be here after this election.
Is there anything else you’d add?
I’d say that, in our current moment, there's a deep challenge in overstating what an anti-authoritarian electoral victory would mean. We may be seduced by the idea that a win means our problems are solved and we can return to business as usual. But the reality is that for those of us who believe that our mission and challenge is to create a new set of systems and processes where power is conceived of and leveraged differently, we aren't electing a champion with our vote. We're creating the context for our next fight.
“…we aren't electing a champion with our vote. We're creating the context for our next fight.”
This is really different from the political notion that says, “I need to pick someone who's going to stand up for me.” We all want that; we really do. But if you're looking clear-eyed at our current economic, political, social, and racial system, the current governing class in many democratic countries is incapable of delivering what most people need.
In fact, it may be worth taking the view that says, "I'm never going to be electing a champion, because few people in the governing class see the world and the future the way I see it, and it's going to take some time to get to that deeper, better future."
And what I choose with a vote is hopefully a person who will form a government that will lean in with the movements seeking change and who understands those closest to the problems must have a clear and power voice in shaping the solutions. Ultimately, when I vote, I am choosing the next person who puts fewer impediments in the way as we work toward a new and more equitable future.