Ev'ry rung goes higher

I gotta tell you that this week at work scored about a 9.7 on my weird shit-o-meter, for a number of reasons. We had quite a lot to discuss at our regular team meeting yesterday, and our manager closed it out by enjoining us all to try to relax a little today, because our company has made Juneteenth a paid holiday in the U.S.

But it occurred to me as he did that that none of the people on that call had to pull themselves out of a hole of institutionalized, systemic racism to get to where we are—we’re all white, and mostly male. That’s one of the definitions of privilege: you don’t have to have a special day called out for you achieving de jure (if not de facto) release from slavery.

Juneteenth marks the day (19 June 1865) that Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, with the news that the War Between the States was over, the Confederacy lost it and consequently human chattel slavery was at an end. Imagine what it must have been like to be in slavery all your life, and then one day some dude you've never heard of announces you're now free--just like the white people. It must have felt like being dropped in an alien world that looked like yours, but was way different. We're 155 years on and that world of de jure equality still hasn't made it to de facto.

“June Nineteenth” morphed into Juneteenth, celebrated by African Americans and ignored by white folks.

Our CEO and senior leadership—almost all white and preponderantly male—have taken concrete steps in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and subsequent international protests to champion diversity and belonging in the company. Word came down late Wednesday that we’d be getting today off, and it seems appropriate that I spend at least some of it thinking about my own privilege and what I can do to counteract the inequities I see around me.

So, even though I gave you Sweet Honey in the Rock last Friday, I’m thinking that Juneteenth is a good time to hear their version of “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”, recorded for the Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War.

We're 155 years on and that world of de jure equality still hasn't made it to de facto. But we can keep on climbing together.