How to Celebrate Juneteenth If You’re White

Step 1: Don’t center yourself. Step 2: See Step 1.

Photo by Evan Wise on Unsplash

Welcome, white folks!

So you just found out Juneteenth is a thing . . . again. This year. Even though it's been a thing. Since like 1865. And now you’re thinking:

“How do I celebrate without making it weird?”

M’kay, let’s walk through this together before you show up with a red velvet Bundt cake, a Kente cloth scrunchie, a Harriet Tubman prayer candle, and a “Happy End of Slavery” balloon.

Don't Bring Potato Salad Unless You're Just Dropping It Off and Leaving!

Look, this ain’t the time for you to test out your Greek yogurt vegan mayo recipe with raisins and “a twist of dill.” Black folks already got aunties and cousins who have earned the sacred right to make potato salad, and we know exactly who’s allowed to bring it. Unless your bowl is a peace offering and you’re prepared to ghost like a reparations fairy, leave the Tupperware at home.

Plus, this ain’t the cookout. You were not invited to the cookout. You do not get invited to the cookout. The cookout is metaphorical. It’s spiritual. It’s an ancestral dimension you can only access after 400 years of unpaid labor and generational trauma. The potato salad will not open the portal.

No Juneteenth Sales.

Please tell your employer that a “40% off chains and grills” sale is not the move. Neither is the “Freedom Friday Clearance Blowout” at Home Depot. Juneteenth is not Black Friday in a dashiki. Nobody wants “Buy One Freedom, Get One 1619% Off.” We’re mourning stolen time, not swiping for patio sets. Stop it! Keep your discounts off our dignity.

Learn Something, Quietly.

Pull up a chair. Pick up a book. Watch a documentary. And—here’s the advanced move—don’t center yourself while doing it. If you find yourself saying “I just can’t believe people were treated like this,” redirect your shock to the voting booth or your uncle at Thanksgiving. We already know. We’ve lived it.

No TikTok Dances.

Juneteenth is not an opportunity for you and your bestie Becky to do the electric slide in a wrap dress while saying “we stand in solidarity.” Sit in stillness instead. Maybe listen to “Strange Fruit” and reconsider every brunch you’ve ever had at a plantation-themed venue. And please—PLEASE—stop jumping in the middle of the dance floor like your off-beat clap is an act of resistance.

If You Must Post, Keep It Short and Humble.

Something like: “Honoring Juneteenth by shutting up, donating, and learning.” No selfies. No sad face filters. No black square 2.0. And for the love of Sojourner Truth, do not make it about your “diverse friend group” or that one time you cried during The Color Purple.

Know When to Lip-Sync for Liberation.

If you find yourself at a Juneteenth celebration and the crowd starts singing the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, this is not your moment to channel Adele. Especially when we get to the line “true to our native land.”

Do not raise a fist! Do not close your eyes! Do not try to harmonize! Do not clutch your chest like you’ve got ancestral ties to Tulsa. You don’t.

Just mouth the words like you're in a hostage video. Or just hummed, dammit. Because your native land was busy writing slave codes when ours was writing survival songs.

Bonus Round: Reparations Are Always in Season.

Support Black artists. Tip Black servers extra. Venmo your Black co-worker with a “Happy Juneteenth! Capitalism Still Owes You” note. Petition your job to recognize Juneteenth as a paid holiday and raise. Slide us the company card for lunch. Every little bit counts, colonizer.

Remember: Juneteenth is a celebration of Black freedom, not a branding opportunity for you to prove how “woke” or “down” you are. So this year, do the radical thing and don’t make it about you.

Happy Juneteenth! We got this. Y’all just chill.

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