Why This Texan Won’t Be Celebrating Juneteenth This Year

Recently, I had a very pleasant retail experience. A nice woman picked up on the second ring, greeted me courteously and walked me through how to navigate the company’s online catalog. I could choose the solid oak “Constitutional chair” with a gold Texas state seal for $350. The leather swivel “judge’s chair” would run $550. Or I could buy jail pants, with elastic waistband and optional stenciling—“County Jail,” for example—for $75.

But this is no ordinary company. A division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Texas Correctional Industries uses prison labor to manufacture goods and provide services to government customers. TCI does over $70 million in sales each year. State officials argue that using prisoners as labor helps to cut state costs and provides them with invaluable work training. However, what good are those workforce skills when employers won’t hire former prisoners because of their incarceration record? Most TCI workers aren’t paid. Prisoners work for little to nothing while the correctional system is profiting off their labor. That sounds a lot like slavery to me.

With Juneteenth approaching, now’s a good time to consider the living legacy of slavery in our state. Juneteenth, or June 19th on the calendar, is a celebration commemorating the June 1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas. A few months later, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and indentured servitude “except as a punishment for crime.” That exception for crime was not a mistake. Texas and other states have exploited this loophole egregiously, incarcerating African-American men and women at scandalous rates, often profiting their labor. I believe Juneteenth cannot be celebrated fully. Freedom has yet to reach the staggering numbers of African-American men and women who are currently incarcerated and generating revenue for the state of Texas.

Right now there are festivities being planned across the state to acknowledge the freedom of African-American Texans. The truth is, I really want to join in on the fun, but we have a lot of work to do before we can truly earn the right to celebrate.

Read more: http://www.texasobserver.org/why-this-texan-wont-be-celebrating-juneteenth-this-year/