Civic Cipher 062522 How to Celebrate Juneteenth with Black People (Part A)

its own type of controversy. You know, who should capitalize off of it, who should exploit it, you know who shouldn't, et cetera. So we're going to spend a good part of the show talking about how that looks and how that feels. So it's for us, it's a bit of a break from the norm of people getting shot by police or you know whatever, police or government and competence

and that sort of stuff. We're just going to talk about individuals, companies, people who we interact with more or less on a day to day basis, and we do believe that's important too. You'd be surprised at exactly how we feel about it. So please stick around because we've been kind of kind of waiting to talk about this on the show here, and we've.

excellence because of y'all. It's because of y'all, And this is a very special ebony excellence for us because for this week it's not like us to normally do this, but for this week we are going to highlight us this show and that includes you, our listeners, that includes our producer Maggie Boan us this show. I want you to tell you a bit about the origins. If this

is the first time you've got in here. But this show in recent months has achieved a couple of really special milestones, not the least of which is we now have thirty broadcast affiliates across the country. I know that doesn't matter to you if you're in San Diego, if you're in Vermont, if you're in Oregon. But for us, for this type of show, that's very very special. And it's because of listeners and because of supporters that we can get this sort of message out across the country.

And then more recently, the podcast form of this show. If you catch us, you know, the end of the show every week, you'll realize that we have a podcast as wellasically the same audio just uploaded this podcast for folks who can't catch us, you know, in their cities. But the podcast form of the show, we just got some support from iHeartMedia, the biggest media company on Earth, and they have opted to highlight our show and put us among their news programs and among their black creators.

And so it's magnificent. And you will share a bit about the origins of the show to give you some context.

was my Father's Day dinner. We don't get celebrated in the same way as moms do, but I think it's a little bit more special. I love it because it's like nobody cares what they care enough to show that they don't care. It's like a joke sort of. But yeah, we got Cane's chicken fingers. I think I got a thirty dollars gift card to Amazon, so that was cool because I didn't have that before. And so my Father's

Day was that. Of course, I spend time with family and that sort of thing, but then I didn't want to lose sight of the fact that it was a shared holiday with Juneteenth. And of course I am a black man. My children are both black males. They will be men in due time. And my little boy seven years old, So in trying to explain to him, because he's about at that age now, trying to explain to him what June teenth is, I have to kind of break out some wild concepts. Okay, do you know what

a slave is? No, for those of that's a good impression of my son. He's been on the show before. If if you're a new listener, But do you know what a slave is?

I was attempting to convict. And then I had to explain to him that the reason that there are black people, certainly so many black people in this country is because of a period of time in this country where slavery was legal. And I did my best to convey many of the horrors of slavery to him so that he could appreciate why we now have a holiday to celebrate the fact that slavery is over. And I'm explaining to

this child there's concepts like time, hundreds of years. These are inconceivable concepts for a child that young, and horrors that he can't imagine. He doesn't know what rape is because he's not old enough to understand even what right, you know what I mean, like consent, the consensually, you know, like any of these sorts of things. And so I'm trying to paint these pictures for them. And my older

son suggested that we should watch a movie together. We're here in the house together, it's the three of us, just watch a movie. So we break out Django Wow.

And so we decided that this is going to be a tradition every year that we're going to honor where we came from on Juneteenth as a part of our family celebration is we're going to take some time and see what it was that our forefathers specifically are and our ancestors, our black forefathers, not the country forefathers, and our ancestors that's probably a better word, went through so that we understand the context and we don't forget the people who again were born into servitude, given a name

that was not authentically theirs, lived very hard, painful and short lives, died without leaving a real story behind, and whose bodies are buried in the ground of this country. Wherever you live right now, they're buried there too. So this is going to be our family tradition, right And I'm gonna be honest. My son asked me some heavy questions, you know, my little boy, does that make white people bad or something like that? Are the white people bad

or the bad guys or something like that? Of course not, of course not. You know, there's good people and bad people of every color. You know. It's funny because as I mentioned to her as I was talking to him, I says, you know, there's white people that were certainly responsible for creating these, you know, conditions, and there were white people responsible for going away with these cos you

know what I mean. And so anybody of any color is capable of being good and bad, and sometimes that changes, you know what I mean. And they could be black, white, you know, any color, any race, any background, any nationality. The thing is, this is sort of what Juneteenth has become for me in the past couple of years, because if I'm honest, I've never been a big go out of my way to celebrate Juneteenth. Single de Mayo has always felt like a much more prevalent holiday in my

life because I saw it being celebrated around me. Right June teenth was sort of celebrated in pockets. I get that it's a big deal in Texas. It's perhaps a much bigger deal in the South. But I grew up on the West Coast, and in my adult life I've lived in Arizona, so you can imagine there's not a lot in the way of Juneteenth festivities. It's just the kind of a thing to hear about once a year, and if I'm being one hundred percent honest, for many years.

Certainly when I was younger, I didn't even know what it was. Just was the middle of June, I supposed. But now as a man with context and I've graduated college, I have children, I've grown up, you know, I get it now and I recognize, especially now that it's a federal holiday, that I have license to lean into that. So this is what I did. I want to ask, you know, I was along conversation, but did you do

any celebrating for a Juneteenth? Because before we go into this own to make sure that everyone has context, I didn't.

So I didn't get to really lean into the day like I wish I would have, or I wish I could have, But I kind of understood it wasn't going to be that kind of day for me, just with the kids being gone. Yeah, that took a lot away from Father's Day, and then you know, I woke up to some tough news, so I didn't really have my celebration pans on.

So Q has a friend who has a big company, has hundreds of employees, and the person who has this company asked if we could speak to his employees about Juneteenth and how to celebrate it appropriately, And so Q and I gave a talk to this company, and we had to instruct people of all races how to celebrate June teenth with us, and the easiest way to kind of surmise what we said is just pretend like it's singled a mile. But for black people, you're more than

welcome to celebrate with us. You know, nobody's gonna get mad at you. Let's have fun. If you overstep, we'll let you know. But don't be afraid. We love you. That was kind of the gist of what we were saying. So we did acknowledge that Juneteenth was happening, and we did kind of lean into at least the spirit of Juneteenth. It might have been the day before, but you know, we did honor our ancestors in our own way, in our fashion. Now we were able to provide some historical context.

We got to teach. Yeah, that's what we do. Yeah, I think, you know, I don't really call our teachers, but we share things that we know in hopes of with the spirit of love and forgiveness and hopes that we can kind of create a ripple effect out there in the world. Now, what we're talking about is the commercialization of June. Right, We're going to spend you know,

most of the show talking about Juneteenth. And I think that you know, you're obviously listening to the show after Juneteenth, but I think that we needed to kind of live through it to then look back on it and see what it was, what it's become, and really to acknowledge it will more than likely continue to grow in in what it is. It's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So let's really get a sense of how do we approach it all of us. Now, I'm going

to share something from NBC. So Juneteenth was finally recognized as a federal holiday. Then came commercialization. So I'm gonna read a bit for black folks, there has been a long tradition of commemorating Juneteenth, but now the Juneteenth it's a federal holiday, complete with offices and schools closing and recognition of it. The inevitable has also taken shape commercialism. Commercialism sorry box stores from coast to coast are lining

shelves of Juneteenth products. Walmart caught the most flack recently for stocking a Juneteenth Great Value Brand ice cream flavor, the labeled touting a trademark symbol. The move prompted questions about who can even own the idea of Juneteenth and the appropriateness of corporations cashing in on what could be considered a bittersweet holiday, commemorating the end of enslavement in the beginning of a generation's long struggle for civil rights.

This year, some attempts to celebrate the day have gone sour very publicly. Many were angry to see the trademark Juneteenth ice cream on shelves developed with the help of a corporation that creates artificial flavor, and a children's museum apologized after its Juneteenth menu called for a watermelon salad. A June teen soul food celebration in Arkansas was canceled after a leak poster for the event revealed that none

of its featured hosts were black. The impulse when it comes to many holidays is to focus on the bright side, in this case emancipation freedom, which lends itself to digestible celebrations and commemorative products doing cell brushes aside the thing black people were being emancipated from centuries of slavery. We cannot at this stage afford symbolism. And I want to take a moment with this because I saw this about

the people who trademark the June teenth name. It came up under the United States Trademark Office PTO something like that, and then it had the name of the company and all the people who were listed on the trademark, and it might have been six people. They were all sort of older white men in suits. You know. It came up. I saw it on social media. But I caught wind of this, and I get that the optics don't look good, right. I get that these white men in Corporate America trademarking

the name June teenth. Granted it was just for ice cream flavor, but trademarking June teenth, it feels hurtful. But then I also have to have some context, and I'd love for you to jump into that. That is perhaps the way that that works for every holiday people. With this capitalism, you have to protect your brand, you have to protect your interests, you have to protect your space

to compete. Trademarking things is kind of the way we go about doing that in business, right, and business for the most part respects green, which has been a problem for black people because we haven't had enough green to really get the corporations to really look out for our interests historically, you know what I mean. And so we've kind of been at the tail end of their considerations historically speaking. So yes, that looked really bad. I wouldn't. I would. I would go in as far as to

say that it probably is really bad. Now. I don't know those men. I'm not going to speak to their motivations other than perhaps it was they were trying to make money. But I don't want that story to prevent people from feeling like Juneteenth isn't approachable, because it is approachable. If Saint Patrick's Day black as I am, I'll get out there and have fun with everybody. I live in Arizona. There's Hispanic people. To get out there, there's Asian people. Yet

we all have fun. It's a holiday. We're all celebrating a holiday. I've never been to Ireland. I actually take that back. I have a grandmother this half Irish and half Cuban, so I guess I got some claim to that. But I don't live my life as an Irish man, you know what I mean. So if I'm out there, no one knows that, and I don't wear those I'm part Irish shirts to kind of fit in. Nope, I'm just me out there having fun with y'all. I do it on Mexican holidays. I do it in Mexico. I

do it for American holiday whatever. Columbus Day. For a long time, I don't celebrate that anymore, obviously because I acknowledge that we are on unseated ancestral lands of the Akima and Odam peoples here in Arizona. But the long time I celebrated Columbus Day, which from what I understand, is widely celebrated among to Irish Americans, probably more Spanish and Italian than Irish. Maybe that's it, you know, But to get out and fellowship with folks for Chinese New Year,

if there's a celebration going on there, pride. You know, I've gone out and hung out for pride. And I don't identify as lgbt Q, I A or plus. You know, I'm A. I believe it sis male cis gendered male. I think that's what I'm supposed to say there. I just want to be respectful, so I'm not trying to make light of that. I want to make sure I get the language right to honor my brothers and sisters

from those communities. But celebrating alongside people who are themselves celebrating, you know, is I believe that's something that's very special. I'm not a Muslim Man, and I have observed the Ramadan Fast in my life, you know, and I've I've done my best to just kind of stand in solidarity

and experience it. And obviously I haven't changed my religion or whatever, but I see the beauty in it, and I I've always found that there's a warm reception to you know, you kind of taking the time to partake in someone else's culture or holiday or whatever. So I want Juneteenth to remain approachable. But you know, we do

see some things that don't really look that good. But at the same time, I believe we also have to recognize that if we want this holiday to be a bona fide holiday alongside Martin Luther King Day and Kwanza and those sorts of things, or as big as as we mentioned a single de Mayo or you know, Saint Patrick's Day or whatever, that it's part and parcel to

an immense amount of commercialization. And I don't see that as a bad thing, you know, because just like there are white folks that can cash in on that, black folks and anybody hispanic, but anybody can cash in on that provided that they're in those industries. That's kind of what capitalism is. So these are my thoughts just out the gate.

Let's honor the lives of those people, as I mentioned, that live very short, hard lives, and Diagmo's bodies are buried in the ground, as is typical of most holidays. You honor the folks who came before you.

with us. If we make mistakes along the way, we'll fix it. We'll move together in the spirit of brotherhood. That's the best that we got