Yesterday was Juneteenth, a day celebrating the end of slavery, and a celebration of Black Americans.
On this day, Facebook asked all employees to take it as a day of learning to better understand the history and systems of racial injustice, so that we may help contribute to their dismantling.
During my reading, I came across The 1619 Project by the New York Times Magazine. It’s an on-going long-form journalism project with the goal of re-examining the legacy of slavery in the United States. It started last year, 2019, on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.
The essays not only tell the history of slavery in the United States, but they also detail how systemic racial injustices can be seen across a wide range of topics, such as interstate highway traffic jams, sugar, healthcare, the prison system, the vast wealth gap, and capitalism.
These essays are simply an entry point into understanding how racial injustice has permeated throughout our society—how it has become systemic.
I highly recommend taking an hour and reading through these articles.