Colin Sheridan: Where's all the fuss about Juneteenth?

Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred 'Paper Boi' Miles, and Donald Glover as Earnest 'Earn' Marks in Atlanta.

“This spooky thing called slavery happened and my entire ethnic identity was erased.” Earn, (played by Donald Glover), Juneteenth, Atlanta

We’ve all been there. That party you don’t want to go to, but one of you feel you must. The tension in the car on the way there. The whisper fight on the walk up the drive when the penny drops the wine you brought is screw-top, not cork. The forced smiles as the doors open, and the sudden confirmation when your host greets you that you were right all along; you don’t belong. These are not your people. You want to go home already, but you can’t. You need to find the bar.

To my mind, one of the best episodes of television to capture that universal dynamic came in season one of Atlanta, the delinquent brainchild of Donald Glover, the artist also known as Childish Gambino. For those of you who never watched the show, please take my advice; start tonight. Be prepared, though, for Atlanta is not interested in holding your hand or, truthfully, giving you what you want. On the surface, it’s just a show about a guy named Alfred and his cousin/manager Earn navigating the rap industry, while their stoned homie Darius and Earn’s ex-girlfriend Van tag along. 

That’s what the show looks like, but it contains multitudes. Uncomfortable, hilarious, and over the four seasons of surreal television, it tells a story that transcended genre. I guarantee you that those who watched it, like, really watched it, have been thinking about it since.

Back to the party. Earn and Van (the brilliant Zazie Beetz) are all of us, the bickering couple going to a party they don’t particularly want to, but one of them feels they must. It’s a Juneteenth party hosted by a mixed-race couple, one a cultural appropriationist, the other a ruthless social climber.

A Juneteenth celebration in Atlanta hosted by a white man doing slam poetry is the perfect metaphor for the ugly dysfunction that rages within America’s tortured soul. To even begin to understand it, we must first know what the hell Juneteenth is.

Well, I must admit when I first watched this show, I did not. Which is in and of itself, telling. On June 19, 1865, about two months after the Confederate general Robert E Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia, Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued nearly two and a half years earlier, on January 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln. 

The holiday is also called “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day.” In my defence for not knowing, a lot of Americans don’t know much about it either. Especially the white ones.

President Joe Biden points to Opal Lee after signing the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in the East Room of the White House on June 17, 2021.

President Joe Biden signed legislation in 2021 that made Juneteenth, which falls on June 19, a federal holiday, after interest in the day was renewed during the summer of 2020 and the nationwide protests that followed the police killings of black Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In Dublin, the American embassy marked the occasion with…very little fanfare as much as I can tell. 

A post on social media explained: “Today we honor (sic) the strength and resilience of those who fought for freedom and continue to work together for a more inclusive future. #Juneteenth.” The post went on to reluctantly explain it “is an opportunity to learn from our history, celebrate our progress, and recognize the work that continues.” The post got one repost and six likes from an official account that has 25,000 followers.

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Admittedly, Ireland is not the target audience for Juneteenth, but do please compare the rather low key approach to it — so uncharacteristically American — to the fireworks that will inevitably be set off from the lawns of the Deerfield Residence, where the US Ambassador to Ireland resides. Have you ever seen the size of that place by the way? Just the 62 acres required in the middle of the Phoenix Park and a mansion that was built in 1776 for Sir John Blaquiere, the then Chief Secretary for Ireland. 

I guess a Juneteenth celebration, acknowledging the emancipation of black slaves from their white masters held in a big white house in the middle of the Phoenix Park may have been a little too on the nose.

I digress. Back to Earn and Van and the best TV show of the last decade. I have an Irish friend who lives in Atlanta — one of the blackest cities in America — who tells me she’s rarely seen a black person there. I urge you to watch this show through that absurd lens. You will laugh and cry and be horrified in equal measure. Crucially, you might also learn something.