Far-left journalist Joy Reid said last week that Juneteenth is the true day that should be commemorated to celebrate American freedom, not July 4th, as she said no one she knows who’s Black celebrates Independence Day.
As Reid spoke with MS NOW analyst Alex Wagner on Reid’s eponymous YouTube show, she revealed that while her White friends love to celebrate America’s Independence Day on the Fourth of July, “I can promise you, Black folks, we will take that day off, we will barbecue because we [are] off, but nobody Black I know is really excited about the 4th of July.”
“It is what Frederick Douglass said it is. It is the celebration of slaveholders who freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the crown, for their slave empire,” she added. “And that is what it is, I mean, if we’re just being perfectly honest, whether you read the 1619 Project or not, you just have to understand that for Black people, particularly for African Americans, there’s a duality to Fourth of July that is hard to reconcile if you think about it too much.”
She compared this to how Indigenous peoples of the North American continent feel about Thanksgiving, “So they’re like, you know, it’s not cute to us, but so y’all go ahead and celebrate your Thanksgiving. We’re not giving thanks. OK?” she quipped. “And then Black people feel that way about Fourth of July.”
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“Whereas Juneteenth to me is the real thing that Fourth of July is, because we really were not a democracy until we ended slavery,” Reid said. “And then we were really not a democracy until the people who lost the Civil War were finally forced to affirm and act upon the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which they were not forced to do until the ’60s.”
“By the way, late! Late!” Wagner agreed.
Reid went on to note that President Abraham Lincoln originally was willing to tolerate slavery even if he disliked it, so long as he could keep the union together.
Reid went on to argue he was “highkey racist,” to the point he advocated, “‘Let’s send them all back to Africa.’ Which, you know, maybe we would have been like, ‘Tell the Lord thank you.’ I don’t know.”
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Wagner went on to agree that Juneteenth is the answer to the hard question of what patriotism should look like.
While Wagner expressed a rejection of Trump representing America, Reid argued that President Donald Trump is an accurate representation of what America is and has always been.
“Donald Trump represents the majority of American history. He is our just desserts,” Reid said.
Wagner pushed back, saying that while he may represent America’s history, he does not represent America’s present.
“He’s some of the present,” Reid replied, juxtaposing him with former President Barack Obama, who she said represents America striving to be better, whereas Trump is the “demon” exposed for the world to see.
