CNN - Despite Juneteenth’s status as a federal holiday, celebrations across the country are being scaled back or canceled. Organizers say safety issues along with mounting resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are making it harder to hold events – raising concerns that political backlash is threatening the commemoration of Black freedom at a time when experts say it is most needed.
“What we’re seeing – businesses pulling back and universities canceling programs in response to attacks on DEI – shows that many institutions and corporations were never truly committed to diversity and inclusion,” said LaTasha Levy, a professor of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, DC. “We’re not even being honest about what DEI really stands for.”
Juneteenth is the oldest regular US celebration of the end of slavery. It commemorates June 19, 1865 – the day that Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and told a group of slaves that the Civil War had ended and they were free - more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
No comments:
Post a Comment