#Juneteenth #Listen2BlackVoices

While I applaud Facebook’s encouraging people to acknowledge #Juneteenth and #LiftBlackVoices, but it misses a couple of critical points, in my opinion, as a white gay male. The first point is the lack of knowledge due to the whitewashing of history in the United States educational system. Not having teaching around the meaning of Juneteenth #Juneteenth and the 1921 Tulsa race massacre in the majority of US history courses is a perfect example of the systematic and institutional racism. 

While it is essential during the current unrest over police brutality against people of color to lift the black voices #LiftBlackVoices around police brutality and the lived experience of African-Americans in the US, I think it is more important to listen to the black voices #Listen2BlackVoices. Lifting marginalized voices is the first part; we will not have equality and justice until the people in power and those who put those people in control demand “We The People” start listening to the marginalized voices in society. 

Listening to those marginalized voices that were largely left out of the Constitution, be they people of color (Native Americans, African-Americans, Latino-Americans), LGBTQ+, women, and poor white people, need to happen every day. Marginalized voices need to be heard not just during a day like #Juneteenth or a month like LGBTQ+ Pride month. 

Even though Thomas Jefferson wrote that “All men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution fell short of removing inequality that benefited primarily white heterosexual males property owners. This inequality marginalized the rest of American society by allowing the states to determine who could participate in the government through voting:

In the 18th-century Thirteen Colonies, suffrage was restricted to white males with the following property qualifications:

Connecticut: an estate worth 40 shillings annually or £40 of personal property

Delaware: fifty acres of land (twelve under cultivation) or £40 of personal property

Georgia: fifty acres of land

Maryland: fifty acres of land and £40 personal property

Massachusetts Bay: an estate worth 40 shillings annually or £40 of personal property

New Hampshire: £50 of personal property

New Jersey: one-hundred acres of land, or real estate or personal property £50

New York: £40 of personal property or ownership of land

North Carolina: fifty acres of land

Pennsylvania: fifty acres of land or £50 of personal property

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations: personal property worth £40 or yielding 50 shillings annually

South Carolina: one-hundred acres of land on which taxes were paid; or a town house or lot worth £60 on which taxes were paid; or payment of 10 shillings in taxes

Virginia: fifty acres of vacant land, twenty-five acres of cultivated land, and a house twelve feet by twelve feet; or a town lot and a house twelve feet by twelve

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States

“We The People” have made progress, which we acknowledge this week with the acknowledgment of employment rights for LGBTQ+ individuals and remembrance of the day that the last of our Black brothers and sisters finally received emancipation in Texas. But to achieve the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all human beings are created equal, we still need to lift and listen to the voices of all marginalized members of our society. 

#Listen2BlackVoices