Juneteenth

So Juneteenth is around the corner, and my institution has given us the day off. While all the celebrations are this weekend, the town seems particularly quiet on Monday, so I’m just gonna lay low and thank my institution for giving me the day-off.

It should be a holiday, but it doesn’t have to be a day-of-service like MLK day or a-giving-thanks-for-their-sacrifice day like Memorial Day. In any case, how we celebrate the day is not a discussion I want to lead or weigh in on. It’s not for me to decide how people celebrate/acknowledge the day.

So a friend of mine presented a particularly interesting example around the holiday that I want to share.

There’s a free show tomorrow night and I invited my friend to go with me. They said that they wanted to but would have to rearrange their tattoo appointment scheduled for that night. So they made arrangements with the tattooist to reschedule.

The tattooist offered Monday night as a possibility and my friend balked at it.

You see the tattooist is African-American, and my friend is white. My friend said that they felt weird “forcing” the tattooist to work.

I countered with the observation that they didn’t ask for that date, but merely asked for the next available time, and the tattooist came back with Monday. How the tattooist chooses to celebrate or not Juneteenth is really up to them, and while my friend can be surprised that the day is an option, it really isn’t up to them how seriously or not the tattooist takes the day.