What It Means To Be Black And Free In America Today

By Virginia Lowman


As soon as news of George Floyd’s death started to circulate in late May, I heard Dominique Fils-Aimé’s rendition of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” play in my mind. This is one of several death rituals I’ve assumed since Philando Castile was shot dead by police on Facebook stay in 2016. Other rituals include preliminary measures I take within my friend groups — screenshots or recordings while in laughter-filled FaceTimes with Black companions, particularly male companions, just in case something happens to them soon after we hang up. I even have practices place in the case that I become a headline, also. Whenever we talk about freedom In the
U.S., We have to acknowledge it as a thing of cultural nuance. We have to reconcile America’s past and the commodification of the Black body as America’s blood diamond.


In the wake of national uprising and calls demanding justice for Black lives in the past month, several Americans are learning of the 155-year-old holiday Juneteenth for the initial time. June 19 commemorates the day in 1865 once slaves in Texas learned of their freedom as decreed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation two years back. Another six months would pass before the 13th Amendment could be ratified to legally abolish slavery and involuntary servitude In the
U.S. Except “as a punishment for crime.” Also called Jubilee Day, Juneteenth is an occasion to commune in prayer and appreciate music and dancing, along with red food and drinks to commemorate the blood that was trim and the lives that were lost as a result of slavery. It is a time for Black families to lean into joy and honor their lineage, and also a time for America to acknowledge it’s gruesome past and the work to be done. Because the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Rayshard Brooks, and other Black boys and ladies reveal, more than 150 years later, Black folks are still fighting to truly embody what it is to be free as they battle the racism inherent in the framework of several of our institutions, modern slavery in the form of mass incarceration, and language that fails to mirror their lived experience.


President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to abolish slavery; nevertheless, it could be more suitable to mention he defunded slavery. Historian and acclaimed Yale professor David Blight, in a lecture throughout his course “The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877”, estimated that three years back to its signing, the South’s “nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the biggest single financial asset in the complete U.S. Economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined.” The 13th Amendment’s caveat associated with criminality would allowance the economic blow that would ensue with the abolishment of slavery. America has habitually required Black people to work for their personhood; freedom remains a sort of mirage — one that requires legislation like the CROWN Act, which aims to make sure protection against discrimination based on hair texture and protective styles like braids or dreadlocks, categorize in attempt to be remotely realized. Racial oppression is America’s threshing floor, distinguishing those whom it deems as worthy of dignity and respect and those who aren’t.


Thus, the Emancipation Proclamation was the constitutionally-approved extension of slavery under the guise of freedom. It is a transient document, one that took newly freed Blacks from the fields and plantations to state and federally-owned prisons, making the judicial system their new slave master. Attorney Bryan Stevenson, the subject of social justice film Just Mercy, wrote that the legacy of slavery is “central to understanding [America’s] practice of mass incarceration and excessive punishment.” Immediately after emancipation, he continued, Black people transitioned from being seen as “fully human ‘slaves’” to “fully human ‘criminals.’”


Stevenson went on to note that “laws governing slavery were replaced with Black Codes governing free Black people — making the criminal-justice system central to new strategies of racial control.” These are the trappings of systemic racism that propose as emancipation facilitated the lawful switch of Black people from property to personhood, America ceased to believe and comply with its own Declaration of Independence, the supposed “truth” that “all boys are created equal.” Ta-Nehisi Coates further explained this in How Racism Created Race in America, stating, “Whiteness and Blackness are not a fact of providence nevertheless of policy — of slave codes, black codes, Jim Crow, redlining, GI Expenses, housing covenants, New Deals, and mass incarcerations.”


because the Emancipation Proclamation fell short in abolishing slavery, so, also, does common English in expressing the social consequences of America’s history with racism. The uprising immediately following the killing of Floyd has revealed the shortfalls of the English language and the ways Black folks are marginalized by its ignore for racial inequity  and what anthropologist Samy Alim calls “structural discriminatory discourse.” Once we talk about systemic racism, as an example, we are, quite literally, using language that does not formally exist to accommodate the Black experience. Merriam-Webster recently revealed its plans to revise the definition of “racism” to include “systemic racism,” at the prompting of Kennedy Mitchum, a African-American scholar and 2020 graduate of Drake University, who found white people defending arguments about racism by citing its definition. The changes to the print dictionary are still forthcoming, yet in an email to Mitchum, the Merriam-Webster editorial personnel acknowledged that “use of the word racism to specifically describe racial prejudice combined with systemic oppression is currently so regular, ignoring this meaning of the word may leave our readers confused or misled.” Mitchum also noted the current definition does not address microaggressions, or race-based assumptions of mental fitness.


Dictionaries are data-driven language equipment that allocate definitions for words that have agreed-upon meanings, nevertheless they don't take into account the nuanced meanings of words in various ethnic and social groups. As we celebrate Juneteenth and look to the future, we need to imagine how these barriers hinder our universal understanding of freedom and racial inequity. It is no secret that language is varied and undergoes changes based on factors like the speaker’s social class and ethic background, though common English language is the structure for all of its variations. Nevertheless conversations about white silence, white fragility, and the elaborate reality of freedom by which Black people live have been contained in Black households for centuries, failed to notice in common English and often dismissed as race talk. We don’t have formal language to describe what Black folks are going through and white people don’t have concrete definitions that let them to hold themselves accountable and discern whether or not their actions are racist or facilitate racism.


White males and females who institute what Black writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison have long called the “white gaze,” viewing Black people by way of the lens of racial bias and racism, are able to do so while claiming and believing they aren’t racist because, by definition, their actions let them to think so. This includes girls like Amy Cooper, who weaponize their privilege, or those like Svitlana Flom and Lisa Alexander, who regularly harass Black individuals or other people of color, causing the viral Karen meme and spawning the popular Instagram account KarensGoingWild. Language is arguably a piece of the insulation Robin DiAngelo describes as soon as addressing White Fragility in her book of the same name: “White people in North America reside in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress.”


Ultimately, if this sort of behavior isn't completely defined, if language continually permits people to put space between themselves and racism, then Black people will still live within siloed definitions of freedom, unable to comfortably birdwatch, or wear hoodies or medical masks without fear of unnecessary scrutiny, detainment, or assumptions of guilt at the hands of police as a result of racially biased policing. If language serves as a buffer between people and racism, and/or nullifies and facilitates silencing the Black experience, freedom, as it is now defined, is still out of reach for all because systemic racism will constantly be the phantom factor countering it.


Juneteeth is a celebration of freedom, nevertheless it is also a reminder of America’s legacy of slavery. It is a possibility to assess the several ways language and racial disparities have shaped and continue to shape the country, and to calculate the role each of us plays in upholding or hindering the freedoms of others, and do the work to self-correct where required by listening, understanding, and learning the different cultural experiences of American life.


In the time it took you to read this article, George Floyd died. May he rest in peace and may even the trauma of his death not have been in vain.