The Retaliation Will Be Televised: Juneteenth and the Black Imagination

Can we not pretend we don’t see what’s happening.

Let’s not act like this Juneteenth is just another Black holiday to slide in between Memorial Day sales and Fourth of July fireworks.

Because the same folks who handed out federal recognition like a consolation prize are now banning the very history that explains why Juneteenth even exists. They’re gutting school curriculums, replacing truth with propaganda, and daring to tell us that our memory is too divisive, too disruptive, too dangerous.

But of course, it is.
Black truth is dangerous.
Black history is disruptive.
Black joy, unbothered and unapologetic, is a threat to systems that depend on our silence.

This country is in the thick of retaliation.
Retaliation for the uprisings.
Retaliation for the murals.
For the marches.
For the demands we placed at the doorstep of power.
For having the audacity to believe that we deserve more than survival.
That we’re not interested in piecemeal progress.
That we will no longer accept being both the backbone of this country and its afterthought.

This is the backlash.
It is bitter.
It is strategic.
It is dangerous.
And it is being televised.

The backlash is wearing a suit and tie.
It’s draped in law, cloaked in patriotism, and whispered in school board meetings.
It’s written into policies that defund, displace, and disappear our people.
It’s in the closing of maternity wards in Black communities.
In the criminalization of protest.
In the death of affirmative action.
In the surveillance of our organizing.
In the firing of Black educators who refuse to lie to their students.

It’s not just political.
It’s spiritual warfare disguised as governance.

And if you pay attention long enough, you’ll notice this country has a pattern.

Every time we rise, they retaliate.
Every time we build, they bulldoze.
Every time we imagine something freer, they panic and push back.
It happened during Reconstruction.
It happened during the Civil Rights Movement.
It happened after Ferguson.
It happened after George Floyd.
And it’s happening now.

So no, this ain’t just another Juneteenth.
This is a checkpoint.
A call to remember what we’re really fighting for.
Not just a holiday, but a harvest…a spiritual reckoning with the promise and the pause.

Because Juneteenth has always been a contradiction.
A delayed announcement.
A celebration rooted in betrayal.
Freedom came late, but we celebrated anyway.
Because that’s what Black folks do…we make something out of nothing.
We gather when we’re grieving.
We dance while in danger.
We laugh even while hunted.
We create in the rubble.

That’s what they still don’t understand.

You can legislate hate, but you can’t kill imagination.
You can bury the facts, but the ancestors already planted the truth.
We are the dreamers of dreams and the builders of what comes next.

We are the ones who dream in color.

We dream in the shade of melanin and midnight.
We dream with our hands in soil and our hearts in sync.
We dream with rhythm, with rage, with reverence.
We dream past the trauma.
Past the curriculum.
Past the cages.
Past the lines drawn to box us in.

And we dream without borders.
Because freedom is global.
The struggle is global.
And if our liberation isn’t linked to Haiti, to Palestine, to Congo, to Sudan, then it isn’t liberation at all. It’s branding.

Juneteenth without borders reminds us that anti-Blackness is not just an American export it’s a global currency.
It moves through police batons and IMF loans.
Through refugee camps and gentrified blocks.
Through poisoned water and land grabs.
Through Black labor exploited from Brooklyn to Brazil.

But guess what?
So does Black genius.
So does Black resistance.
So does Black joy.

And that is what they can’t legislate away.

They can try to close every DEI office.
They can rip the names out of textbooks.
They can arrest teachers and cancel electives.
But they can’t stop what’s already in our blood.

Because we were raised on Sankofa.
On Zora and Baldwin.
On sermons and cipher sessions.
On “Lift Every Voice” and the voice your grandma used when she said, “baby, keep going.”

We’ve always known how to speak multiple languages at once. Grief and joy. Pain and praise. Truth and triumph.
That’s why this country fears us.

Not just for our anger, but for our vision.
Our refusal to settle.
Our commitment to becoming.
Our ability to imagine what has never existed and then build it anyway.

So yes, the retaliation will be televised.
But so will the resistance.
So will the cookouts, the convocations, the collective care circles, the strategy sessions, the scholarship funds, the street corner baptisms, the barbershop debates, the rooftop gatherings, the midnight meditations, the victory dances, the healing.

They can film the fire, but they cannot film the faith.

This Juneteenth, we remember who we are.
We remember that freedom didn’t arrive. It was claimed.
It wasn’t handed down. It was taken, lifted from the mud with bruised hands and broken chains.
And that means we have a responsibility. Not just to celebrate, but to continue.
To create.
To challenge.
To confront.
To correct the record.
And to keep building what the world told us was impossible.

Our ancestors are not ghosts. They are guides.
And they’re watching to see what we do with the breath they prayed we’d still have.

So no, we will not be quiet.
We will not be cute.
We will not be compliant.
We will not be co-opted.
We will not make room at the table just to be served scraps.

We’re building our own tables.
With our own recipes.
And our own rhythms.
And our own names at the center.

Because we are not here by accident.
We are the wildest strategy of people who were never supposed to survive.
We are the answer.
We are the proof.
We are the prophecy.

Let them watch.
Let them panic.
Let them try to censor, sanitize, and rewrite.

The retaliation will be televised.
But so will our joy.
So will our art.
So will our strategy.
So will our imagination.
So will our becoming.

And fam, they are not ready for what we are about to build.