The Daily Beast: “Juneteenth doesn’t just celebrate the end of nearly 250 years of Black chattel slavery—a brutal institution of forced labor, sexual abuse and exploitation, and wanton violence.
The day also celebrates the defeat of the Confederacy, a traitorous entity founded on the cornerstone belief of white supremacy and perpetual Black subjugation, as famously declared by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens.
For that reason, amidst the revelry of the occasion, it’s also critical to acknowledge that while the Confederacy may be long dead, Confederate ideology is alive and well—particularly among the Republican faithful.
America as a whole has a white supremacist problem, but it is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than on the political right, where openly revanchist, authoritarian, and anti-democratic powers consistently prove they are motivated by white racial resentment and vengeance. In short, the GOP is the neo-Confederate party….
Juneteenth—which we should never forget was labeled “divisive” and reverse-racist by numerous elected Republicans—is a reminder that the liberatory fight never ends. Especially when the GOP, a neo-Confederate party in all but name, is hoping to unfree so many of us.”