The Value of a Black Child on Juneteenth

Juneteenth is often misunderstood to be the day slavery ended in the United States.

But that's not really what it is.

Slavery was declared illegal in the Confederacy more than two years earlier when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Yet thousands of enslaved people in Texas remained enslaved until June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston and announced that they were free.

That is what Juneteenth commemorates.

Not just freedom.

But freedom delayed.

It is a holiday that reminds us there can be a painful distance between what is true on paper and what is true in practice.

A distance between laws and lived reality.

A distance between justice promised and justice delivered.

This Juneteenth, I can't help thinking about that distance when it comes to the death of one-year-old Kohen Wiley in Mississippi.

Once again, we find ourselves confronting uncomfortable questions about whose lives are protected, whose suffering is noticed, and whose deaths demand action.

The story is still unfolding. There are facts we do not yet know. There are investigations that must occur.

But there are some things we already know.

We know that diapers are expensive.

We know that federal food assistance programs do not cover them.

We know that parents without adequate diapers can face scrutiny from child welfare agencies.

We know that poverty creates impossible choices for families every day.

We know under no circumstance should a child end up shot dead over diapers--stolen or not.

We say every child is precious.

We say every child matters.

We say every child is made in the image of God.

But if that is true, then every child's life should be treated as precious.

Every child's death should matter.

The story of Juneteenth is the story of a nation discovering that declaring something does not make it so.

Declaring freedom did not immediately create freedom.

Declaring equality did not immediately create equality.

Declaring that all children are valuable does not automatically mean all children are treated as valuable.

Scripture is filled with God's concern for those society overlooks: the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the sick, the vulnerable. If the measure of a Christian society is how we treat the least of these, then we aren't even remotely close to being able to call ourselves a Christian nation without being blatantly blasphemous.

I know. Ouch.

Juneteenth is a celebration, but it is also an invitation.

It invites us to ask where justice is still delayed.

Where dignity is still denied.

Where freedom exists in theory but not in practice.

And whether we are willing to help close that distance.

Because the work of freedom did not end in Galveston in 1865.

And it's damn sure not finished today.

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So what can you do?

• Learn about racial disparities in child welfare, policing, media coverage, and poverty.

• Advocate for public policies that make diapers, formula, and other infant necessities more accessible.

• Pay attention to stories involving Black children--even when they are not receiving national attention.

• Examine your own reactions. Which stories make you angry? Which stories barely register? Why?

  What else would you add to this list?