Juneteenth

I woke up and made the mistake I never learn from which is reading the news first thing.  Being embarrassed for your own species is just always a tough start to the day.  Today I read about how towns are cancelling their Juneteenth celebrations because local businesses are getting backlash from customers. I find this especially disappointing so close on the heels of Father’s day.  When I look at historical events and think about whether it would be more appropriate to celebrate emancipation or ejaculation, I’m more comfortable celebrating the formal end of our country’s darkest chapter.

Having been taught very little about history in my public education, it has been the hardest thing to teach my children in homeschool. I had to learn so much myself. We began with geologic and evolutionary history.  I found out that tyrannosaurus rex lived closer in time to George Washington than triceratops.  Reading Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari, I learned about how the scientific revolution gave us the opportunity to utilize other sources of energy beside human toil.  From Charles Mann, I learned that European explorers and their livestock killed off 95% of the western American population with new diseases and outright murder. They were then “forced” to purchase more humans from Africa to replace the labor force.  From Cynthia and Stanford Levinson, I learned how the southern colonies’ dependence on slave labor lead to compromises in the creation of the constitution that still cripple our government today.  In the documentary “Freedom Riders” we saw how, just a few years before I was born, we were still violently opposing the ideas of equality and free speech that we supposedly hold so dear.  Not once in my journey through history (now 8 years in) did I read about how impregnating someone constituted  a cause for national celebration and barbecues all around.  I did read about the prevalence of sexual assault by European colonists, slave owners, and present day Americans.  Is this type of fatherhood to be celebrated as well?

Maybe we step back from whatever faction we’ve fallen into and generally agree that not allowing humans to be treated as property is a good move.  An interesting thought experiment that I read about recently goes like this: Imagine you are the first conscious entity that exists; you are conscious but ghostlike in appearance without definite shape, color, or form.  You are responsible for creating a set of laws that fairly defines the society you live in, but do not know what body you will ultimately end up with?  Would you then create a system that includes slavery? Allows discrimination?  If not, how is this different from the plight of unborn children that Christians are so wound up about?  If we accept their premise that unborn lives are precious, should we not craft a society that values each and every one of those lives equally?  Pro-life racism makes about as much sense as vegan cannibalism.