Squires: Conservatives attack Juneteenth because they've let feelings about their political foes trump facts about history

There are two things progressives can’t keep their hands off of: America’s children and its history. The reluctance of conservatives to fight for either in the public square shows that the right’s besetting sin is cowardice, not prejudice.

The encroachment of the “Pride” agenda into every area of our society is due in part to conservatives who care more about tax rates than fighting the people who would rather see drag queens in schools than armed guards. The conservative reaction to Juneteenth’s elevation from regional commemoration to federal holiday is also symptomatic of the modern right, particularly its selective defense of American history.

Juneteenth has been celebrated in Texas for decades. It commemorates the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865. That was the day Union General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 and freed all remaining slaves in the state, over two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

President Trump recognized Juneteenth during his administration and pledged to make it a federal holiday during the 2020 election. But the day has been surrounded by a cloud of partisanship since President Biden signed the holiday into law in 2021.

Candace Owens calls the holiday “sooo lame” and “ghetto.” Charlie Kirk acknowledged that the day celebrates the “end of slavery in the United States,” a feat he said was made possible by Lincoln and Republicans. That was 2020 during the Trump administration. Now that Biden is in office, Kirk calls the day a “CRT-inspired federal holiday that competes with July 4th.”

This isn’t to say that Democrats aren’t trying to distort America’s long, ugly, and complicated racial history for partisan gain. That part of the conservative critique is accurate. The response from people like Owens and Kirk, however, show that in a culture dominated by partisan politics, tribalism often trumps principles.

This is why the progressive left and conservative right operate like mirror images of one another, especially on issues of race. Their instincts are not driven by values that shape their worldview, but by enemies who fuel their anti-identity.

Progressives know that attributing a value to “whiteness,” “white culture,” or “white supremacy” is an easy way to get many black people to reject it. There is a common thread connecting Black Lives Matter’s rejection of the nuclear family and urban school districts eliminating high education standards in the name of “equity.” Both are seen as “white” values by some of the nation’s foremost race scholars.

This warped worldview has real-world consequences. In 2019, approximately half of all black babies in New York City were aborted, but the NAACP and BLM didn’t protest this destruction of black life. Why? Because when the pro-life movement is accused of “upholding white supremacy,” then dead black babies become a symbol of liberation.

The same dynamics exist on the right. The party of Lincoln will cannibalize its own history and “we freed the slaves” political rhetoric if that’s what it takes to fight woke leftists pushing CRT. Republicans claim Democrats were the party of slavery. Yet some conservatives fight to preserve confederate statues while dismissing Juneteenth and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the hymn first sung in 1900 by black students celebrating Lincoln’s birthday.

This is what a country looks like when its politics and culture descend into a never-ending cycle of actions by one side and Pavlovian responses by the other. We have become a nation defined more by our enemies than our values. That is good for neither the health of our institutions nor national cohesion. While I believe we spend far more time talking about the past previous generations endured than the future our descendants will inherit, that doesn’t mean history is unimportant. Conservatives who are tricked into diminishing the GOP’s role in the abolitionist movement are elevating feelings over facts. They are just as controlled by the left as the progressive voters who believe every media fabrication, from the “Don’t Say Gay” bill to Georgia’s voting laws being “Jim Crow 2.0.”

I wonder how conservative politicians, activists, and commentators would have reacted if, in 2021, President Biden also decided to make the first day of Passover a federal holiday. Biden could have said doing so was an effort to fight back against “right-wing extremism” and the anti-Semitism that fueled the deadly attack at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

I hope conservatives would be able to separate his self-interested decision to make a Jewish holy day into a national holiday from the actual meaning of Passover. I wonder how many elected Republicans would say, “No one had ever heard of Exodus until a few minutes ago.” It's impossible to say definitively whether the same conservatives who slam Juneteenth would do the same to Passover. But one thing is for certain: If freedom from Egyptian slavery is worth celebrating, so is the end of slavery in this country.