What follows is the text of the status update I posted on Facebook a few hours ago in honour of Juneteenth, the holiday which commemorates the emancipation in 1865 of the last enslaved Africans in the United States of America. I ain’t editing it to tailor it to my blog audience, because I have no way of knowing whether there’s anything specific that needs to be said here that’s any different from what I’ve said there. But I suspect those of you who have things to say about this matter will make your perspectives known to me in due course, and you are of course welcome to do that.
I strive very hard to do whatever I have the capacity to do to make sure that the statements and gestures I make to acknowledge significant occasions in the histories of peoples to which I do not belong don’t centre me and are offered in a spirit of the proper respect and affection due, but Juneteenth is simply too important to me for me to be willing to risk not saying anything at all rather than potentially putting my foot in it by speaking up and saying something with which some Black acquaintance of mine or other might be displeased. I’m fairly confident that there isn’t a person of goodwill on the planet who isn’t acutely aware that the world is vastly better because Black people exist then it would be if according to some godforsaken tragedy they did not, and I in particular feel the need to pay homage to whatever helps Black people thrive, because as a white rapper (and as someone who loves various other expressions of Black culture and genius, notably blues, reggae, funk, R&B, jazz, and soul music), it is no exaggeration to say that I owe black people my life, my light, my everything. There’s no way in hell that I could ever possibly repay that debt, but I do want to make known to the Black people in my life that, to a person, their well-being matters to me, and it’s important to me to do whatever I can to facilitate that well-being. And I suspect it’s right and proper, rather than exploitative, to note that the suffering meted out unto Black people in the aggregate, historic and ongoing, is a series of grotesque injustices and evils, and to humbly pledge myself to do what I can to fight them.  I am frightened of epitomizing “allyship theatre“, and strongly desire to be an example of effective and meaningful allyship instead, but better to speak up than to remain safely silent. On Juneteenth, that’s the very least I can do.