First, we'll start with saying Happy Juneteenth! I've sort of been following the large scale momentum of the introduction of Juneteenth as a national holiday, and not just a cultural holiday. Honestly, I was a little worried that it would just be viewed by mainstream America as a day off. And not just a day off, but a day off as weather warms (and just a few days shy of the Summer Solstice, no less). So basically a party holiday, as opposed to a celebratory holiday. There's a difference.
I was watching a story on KGW** (link) and it got me to thinking about, much in the same way the Black community is not a monolith, there's no one way to celebrate. For some people, every celebration involves a whole lot of partying, and Juneteenth is no different. Some people like to view the day as a solemn day. And there's a whole spectrum of ways to celebrate, depending on any person's preferred method of celebration.
I probably fall into the "reflective/solemn" side of the celebration spectrum. I'm a pretty solitary/introverted person, and so partying just isn't really my thing. I also like to reflect on things (as evidenced by like 10 years of blog posts). But I do like to celebrate, so I make nice stuff. I bought some bulk dried hibiscus and made a sugar-free sorrel ginger drink. And, yes, it's delicious.
For me, I'll probably go for a walk and think about how far we've come: from an America where slavery was accepted to the point where people were willing to die and divide the country just to maintain the right to "own" a slave, to an America where we celebrate that slavery is no longer acceptable. Where a Black person is their own master. I'll also think about how far there is to go until that's fully realized, and what it looks like to get there. I debate with myself sometimes about how close or not we are to a world where everyone truly has equal opportunity. Juneteenth, to me, is about the beginning of that road to true equality. But, as history shows, simply being freed from slavery wasn't the same thing as equality with former slave owners and their peers. There's still a lot of...shall we say, social residue...from the Civil Rights era. There's a large portion of the population with personal memories of that era. They were alive and fighting for, and against, basic Civil Rights for African-Americans. The past decade, especially, has really brought out a lot of the ugly feelings, and a lot of the trauma, that have been bubbling barely below the surface since Civil Rights were won. But a lot of progress has been made, too. I celebrate the progress, past and present. I think about how we're seeing less racial bias in policing and the legal system. I think about how education (including college acceptances, and also opportunities post-graduation) is becoming less biased. Black voices in the systems themselves are being heard more. Is racism over? GTFOH. Of course not. That's why you appreciate the progress, but still look forward to the next step. I might write more on this later, but maybe not.
** I'm a pretty big fan of KGW. Especially "The Story". with Pat Dooris. I think he does a good job of giving fair, balanced looks at issues on both the city and state level. I never catch a bias from him, which is refreshing. Shameless plug for a show I like.
To the second part....I haven't posted much because I've been busy with a lot of things. I won't get too much into it, but it was pretty much everything from every angle coming in at me at once. And I'm not out of the woods yet. I'm trying to get another paper or two done (playing with tangent bundles of gL, and maybe a generalization via the super ellipse of gL I've been working out of Hartshorne's Algebraic Geometry and getting some of the nitty gritty of Representation Theory down from Dummit & Foote's intro chapter on the subject, too. And I've been following the news. On top of the other things I have going on. But I haven't abandoned the blog. I just need to focus on me and getting things in order to keep things going. And I'm kind of doing it with zero help, so it's kind of time consuming.