Juneteenth observers confront tough subjects

WASHINGTON — Dozens of people gathered at the Washington Public library Monday night to observe the Juneteenth holiday, recognizing the end of slavery in the United States on the anniversary of Union troops arriving in Gavleston, Texas in 1865 to enforce emancipation.

The crowd watched and discussed the 2022 movie Till, an autobiography about the mother of the 14-year-old Emmett Till who was lynched in 1955.

Guest speaker Michael DeVaughn — a brother of Washington United Methodist Church Pastor Anthony DeVaughn — said the holiday sparked important conversations about race in America.

“This is good and I hope people start speaking more about what happened,” he said. “It’s not about blame, it’s about, first, understanding … these are questions they do not want people to talk about or understand.”

During a group discussion after the film, Anthony DeVaughn noted that Washington was a heavily white community, observing that his family members made up the only Black people in the room Monday night.

He said racism was just as present in Washington today as it was in Mississippi at the time of Till’s murder, even if it felt less visible to most of the community.

“The same problems that you think I left in California are right here in Washington … it’s just on a smaller scale,” he said. “We were going home one day. Where we live, guess what, there’s nobody that looks like me. We were followed home to the church parsonage … people act like it’s somewhere else. I’m here to tell you, it’s right here.”

In the same discussion, some advocates said the struggle against racism was not about simply avoiding overt discrimination, but about actively recognizing and grappling with assumptions that were built on racist ideas and a history of oppression evidenced by demographic gaps in wages, education and criminal justice.

Washington For Justice Member Dan Henderson was one such advocate.

“What we saw in this film was white supremacy in its violent form, and none of us would identify with that,” he said. “But the thing we may not realize is that we live in a white supremacist society. Not the white-hooded kind, but the kind that says, ‘White skin is superior to all other colors of skin.’ That’s the default setting of the United States … the work of anti-racism isn’t to go after these kinds of people. It’s to work on the white supremacy in my own heart.”

At least one white audience members said she was skeptical of the idea that the broader community could be responsible for racism, given the work of some white people to combat it.

“That isn’t for all of us, because I have no prejudice,” she said. “I just don’t see it.”

It’s a sentiment shared by many Iowans. Republican State Rep. Jeff Shipley wrote a column in May arguing in favor of the state’s recently enacted curriculum controls which ban educators from teaching that, “The United States of America and the state of Iowa are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist.” Shipley argued that the idea was pushed by, “Indoctrinators, eager to groom children into radical ideology.”

Anthony DeVaughn, however, said those critiques were based on a flawed premise. He said that everyone “saw color,” whether they wanted to or not.

“People say that because they don’t want to be put into that group of people that have an issue with color,” he said. “But we have a certain idea of what we think a Black person looks like, acts like. Maybe you don’t, but you do. You know why? Because I do.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com