"There Remains a Hint of Sourness to It All"

"The process of mainstreaming a once renegade and often neglected holiday was bound to be sporadic and riddled with contradictions. It hasn't been lost on observers that Congress passed a Juneteenth bill without much trouble, but hasn't done anything meaningful to curb police power, which is what most of last year's demonstrators were actually asking for, let alone tried to pass ambitious legislation, like reparations, to address historical injustices. Gordon Granger couldn't have known, on his deathbed in Santa Fe, the debt that embattled 21st-century PR departments and politicians would owe him after he was gone. But he probably wouldn't be surprised that they, too, would be offering a degraded substitute for what people really needed."

Zak Cheney-Rice at New York describes "America's Hollow Embrace of Juneteenth."