I'm glad to know about Juneteenth, but sad that my 52 years of being white and embedded in more whiteness meant that I'm too damn old to just now be knowing about it.

Some thoughts:

1) I can observe Juneteenth by OBSERVING. Listen. Watch. Try to understand. Banish a bit of my own ignorance.
2) I can celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation without making that celebration all about me. Or even the tiniest bit about me.

3) As I understand it (still banishing my ignorance, one tiny whitewashed patch at a time), Juneteenth is a sacred day for an oppressed people.
4) Hey, I already have a model for how to (and how NOT to) observe days that are sacred to other people!

5) This would be how NOT to do it.

(NOTE: Snopes has a page on that ham. tl;dr—it's real, but the picture is often incorrectly attributed. LINK: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hammy-hanukkah/)

6) My observances of Ramadan, Hanukkah, and Cinco de Mayo typically begin with accepting that other people are more important than I am (that's just math: there are a lot more other people than there are me).
7) From there, I listen and learn. "Observance."

8) And then I act on the stuff I've learned. Banishing my ignorance is more than just knowing better. It's knowing how to show respect in ways that are increasingly respectful, and diminishingly problematic. More understanding. Less Hanukkah ham.

9) Ultimately, the only way in which Juneteenth will ever be "for" me is the opportunity it presents for me to respect a group of people who deserve a lot more of my respect than they've been getting.

10) "Too damn old" needs clarification:

NOT too old to change.
NOT too set in my ways to care.

→ Too old to NOT be embarrassed, appalled, chagrined, discomfited, and otherwise put right off my high-fiber lunch by how long I was ignorant of Juneteenth.

11) My voice here on Twitter, while not as loud as others, is amplified far out of proportion to many of the voices of those for whom #Juneteenth is sacred.

I can make up for that, maybe a little, by retweeting some of those voices. More of THEIR words. Fewer of mine.

(END)