Let me start with the policy dynamic.
I was really intentional about providing the caveat of,
we really did not elect politicians to go to DC and give us holidays.
Now I say that because the same people who voted yes to
Juneteenth as a federal holiday are the same people
who voted no to the George Floyd policing and accountability act.
They're the same people who voted no to the John Lewis voting rights act.
They're the same people who voted no to equal pay for equal work, all right?
So as a policy expert senator give us your breakdown of
the significance and the insignificance of Juneteenth
as a holiday that as a movement but as a holiday.
>> Well, thank you for this Dr. Richie and only on TYT are we gonna get this truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.
First, I definitely want to shout out
Opal Lee consider the grandmother of Juneteenth.
She's been fighting for this I believe since the late 80s.
She is in her 90s and she should be lifted for her perseverance and
what she not only was trying to do but what she has accomplished and
she still out there on the front line.
So I want to put that out there, thank you, because she had a vision without her
vision and her fight and having over a million people signed a petition,
we would not have even got gotten the holiday.
And it is a symbolic reflection of unanswered business in
these United States of America and so on the policy side Dr.
Richie, you have laid out the same folks.
These same folks don't care that student debt is not canceled, which would have
a positive impact on all working people, but particularly the black community,
particularly black women, hold the largest amount of student debt.
These are the same folks that let the child tax credit expire.
These are the same folks as reverend Dr.
Barber and his colleagues just marched on Washington just on on Sunday.
The poor people's movement, 140 million people living in poverty,
black people among those just have a tin ear to those kinds of struggles.
And so we do need policy fixes, not just some scraps, not just a celebration.
And I mean that in not any disrespect to Opal Lee,
cuz Opal Lee did what she was supposed to do.
Now we need these other folks to wrap some stuff around this celebration so
that we have real transformation for the African American community in this
country and that's economic transformation.
>> That's a great said, well, Dr.
Hambleton, you talk about economics and almost all of your lectures and
how it connects back to policy and to decency of life.
So Juneteenth obviously a celebration.
A celebration of overcoming but the reality of Juneteenth is
rooted in the fact that they did not want enslaved black folk or
enslaved Africans to participate fully in the economic
reality of America, that was the actual barrier.
So let's talk about Juneteenth in the context of do we still have
a similar barrier in this modern construct where the powers that be,
they don't want black folk to have that kind of economic power in this country?
>> I mean, there's so many links that are going on today that we can go all
the way back to the time in Galveston's when the general entered and
issued that field order.
For example, there's this narrative that Juneteenth is about black people
realizing that they're free, that's completely wrong.
What what Juneteenth was about in that instance,
was a military might, that was able to enforce an emancipation.
And similarly, today, one could even argue our political movement that
got us to the point where it's recognized as a holiday is sadly linked to
all the atrocities that have taken place with George Floyd, with other other
examples that took place that has led to a recognition of some of the injustices.
I guess the large point I'm trying to make is that the violence is not delinked
from economics, is not dealing at all.
And as you astutely point out that using violence to sub
subjugate a people keep them in their place and
even the threat of violence has direct implications on one's freedom and
one's freedom needs to be defined in terms of economic freedom.
If it's not, it's not authentic.
If we talk about freedom to vote, freedom to choose, those are important human
rights, but equally important as a human right is an economic right to a job,
is economic right to some income, is an economic right to some capital.
And throughout American history,
black people have not been afforded the same access to these attributes.
And what's worse when they were able to accumulate by heroic efforts to get land,
to get capital, it's never had the political
codification that's been afforded to white people.
In other words, the threat of violence or actual violence,
the fraud, the malfeasance that takes place from
the private sector without a political apparatus to
protect a citizen from that has been our American history.
>> There's always a front leaning narrative,
a public relations narrative that comes out of these historical events.
When I tell my college students that the emancipation proclamation
actually did not free all enslaved people, they looked baffled.
What Abraham Lincoln did is provided a proclamation
specifically for places under confederate control,
and you had about four variations of America outside of
confederate control that still legally had slaves, okay?
Once again, the public relations narrative says, wow,
Abraham Lincoln freed all of the slaves, that's it.
So let's run with that, you know why?
Because their story is simple.
It's binary, good, bad, right?
He did it or didn't, but that's now the reality is very nuanced.
Senator Turner, let's talk about the trickery even today of what
seems to be good policy in the front but on the back is bad policy.
We see this with for example the celebration of Juneteenth.
What has happened to Juneteenth?
It has become massively commercial, so much so
that they are selling damn ice cream with the word Juneteenth on it and
not giving black folk one dime, all right, so let's talk about that.
Let's talk about the commercialization.
What looks great in the front however, may be a very problematic issue in the back.
>> Sure, and however they can.
African American, our culture, we dominate pop culture all over the world.
So that's a whole another statement like I'm glad you brought up the fact
that the emancipation proclamation strong document, glad it happened and
it didn't happen by osmosis.
It didn't happen because of the goodness of President Abraham Lincoln.
It happened because black folks pushed for that.
People like abolitionist Frederick Douglass was in his ear,
that was the push.
And there's a magnificent article that was written by Professor Kellie Carter Jackson
in the Emancipator about exactly why is it that Lincoln?
The title actually is Lincoln gets too much credit for free and
enslaved black people and I mean she really breaks it down.
But before I go there, Dr. Richie and I wanna ask you a question.
So the emancipation proclamation as you laid out only three the slaves in
the confederacy, which at that time, because the confederacy has split off
the North or the president of the North, which was President Abraham Lincoln.
He really had no legal authority over the confederacy, not technically, so
while it was a political ploy and I'm not saying it wasn't a good political ploy
cuz sometimes you need good political ploys.
We do need to understand that the slaves in the border states,
because this is now tactical from a military perspective.
The slaves in the border states did not reap the benefits of that
emancipation proclamation and that is a problem too.
But let me go to general order number three.
[INAUDIBLE].
>> That in Galveston Texas, right, we got general order number three.
And it was brought there by General Gordon Granger.
And it's very short cause I want people to understand what was happening.
He said, the people now, that's written by the executive, right.
The people are informed that in accordance with the proclamation from
the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.
This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and
rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection here for
existing between them become that between employer and hired labor.
The freed are advised to remain.
Now this is it, you all got.
Hey, get ready,
the freed are advised to remain at their present homes and work for wages.
They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military post and
that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
I mean what the hell?
First of all, black people have never been allowed to be idle.
I'm just I just want folks to wrap their minds around general order number three.
The relationship is now that of employer and seriously,
think about that now even in that exact reinforcing stereotypes
about black folks who built this joint as my sister Angela
[LAUGH] as my sister Angela Rye so clearly points out.
So even in the doing of it, there is still this encapsulation through policy,
through this executive order, that black folks are somehow less less deserving,
that we don't work, that our idleness will not be supported and
that's the executive order that the general gave to tell people in Galveston
texas that they were free air quotes.
This is serious and this country continues to perpetuate.
See that general order number three is a perpetuation of what is happening right
here in 2022.
Doc.
I want you to opine on that.
Man, I I love that you read that because it demonstrates
the weaponization of race and the fact that our legal structure has
never treated black people the same as white people.
And you actually reading the text made that clear.
I mean the point I was trying to make earlier is that even in the context of so
called freedom and not a freedom to be idle as you just talked about and
not a freedom to have mobility throughout society because you still have
that threat of bondage if you chose not to work.
And you clearly laid that out.
But it was a military might that came in and enforced it.
And that's the point I want to make also that it wasn't just the proclamation
that was declared, it was a military might lead by a general that came in and
enforced black people.
They even have that limited freedom in that context.
And, you know, that carries over today.
And that's that's the point.
I mean, we we dehumanize people with a legal structure.
We talk a lot about bigotry and hatred and
and all of that, which is a problem and should be addressed.
But what is really pernicious is a state apparatus that enforces
a property right and whiteness.
And it could not have been said more clearly than
you just reading the text from it the way you just did