I know it's a little late for this but hear me out.
On Friday, June 18th, I attended a Juneteenth Celebration/Pageant in Grand Prairie, TX. My initial motivation to attend was to get out and enjoy my community and find an opportunity to do a little service and eat some free grub. As I entered the auditorium where the event was held, I thought to myself, "are Juneteenth Celebrations relevant in 2009?" Is the black community in need of piss poor pageantry or should we put a bit more energy into re-building our communities and educating our children? I decided to reserve judgment until I had given the event a chance.
The auditorium, a cafeteria in an elementary school that could easily house 300 people, had an attendance of about 50 people. The Master of Ceremonies was a local postman who moonlights as a comedian. His act consisted of buffoonery and ridiculing nearly everyone in the audience. As he introduced the white City Councilman who was to give a proclamation, he said, "Man I see you all the time when I eat breakfast on 19th Street...when I speak to you, you always look at me like I'm black!" Maybe that was to ease the racial tension but I just didn't get it.
He introduced the first “act” who enlisted audience participation to sing ALL the verses of the Negro National Anthem sans music/instruments. (I did a lot of mumbling on that part because I only know the first and last verse.) The following acts were comprised of the same old American Idol rejects, several armies of Praise Dancers, and some kids reading essays about Juneteenth, MLK, Barack Obama, blah, blah, blah. I can’t tell you if they were good or bad because the sound system took a break at this point. That was about 15 minutes of my life that I will never get back.
The most dramatic part of the evening came when the lady who sang “Lift Ev’ry Voice” returned to the stage for a “B” selection. She seemed to be a religion fanatic so she delivered a testimony before she BLESSED us with her song(s.) She went on to say that she saw a rainbow the previous day with only 3 colors and she knew it was a visual representation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. She announced that the DEVIL stole her lyrics so she was just going to let the LORD use her. She cocked her head back and manhandled the microphone as she spliced about 6 songs together starting with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow!” I almost lost my composure when she belted out… “Have you tried Jesus...He’s alright,” followed by “I Believe I Can Fly” and then back to Dorothy’s rainbow. The audience was wowed by this over zealous lyrical train wreck and several, including the comedian, even did a little praise dancing themselves. I was appalled at the whole spectacle.
During the closing remarks, the president of the Juneteenth Committee said, “We may not be where we need to be, but we SHOL ain’t where we started!” My question is when will we get there? We all know what we need to do to get there and it's not by behaving as minstrels or parading around an auditorium and blaming the DEVIL for one's lack of preparedness. Was the author correct who coined the following phrase: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
I’m going to petition the committee to have a Young Inventors Contest as a part of next year’s celebration. I’m creating the rubric as we speak so I can be a part of the solution.
On Friday, June 18th, I attended a Juneteenth Celebration/Pageant in Grand Prairie, TX. My initial motivation to attend was to get out and enjoy my community and find an opportunity to do a little service and eat some free grub. As I entered the auditorium where the event was held, I thought to myself, "are Juneteenth Celebrations relevant in 2009?" Is the black community in need of piss poor pageantry or should we put a bit more energy into re-building our communities and educating our children? I decided to reserve judgment until I had given the event a chance.
The auditorium, a cafeteria in an elementary school that could easily house 300 people, had an attendance of about 50 people. The Master of Ceremonies was a local postman who moonlights as a comedian. His act consisted of buffoonery and ridiculing nearly everyone in the audience. As he introduced the white City Councilman who was to give a proclamation, he said, "Man I see you all the time when I eat breakfast on 19th Street...when I speak to you, you always look at me like I'm black!" Maybe that was to ease the racial tension but I just didn't get it.
He introduced the first “act” who enlisted audience participation to sing ALL the verses of the Negro National Anthem sans music/instruments. (I did a lot of mumbling on that part because I only know the first and last verse.) The following acts were comprised of the same old American Idol rejects, several armies of Praise Dancers, and some kids reading essays about Juneteenth, MLK, Barack Obama, blah, blah, blah. I can’t tell you if they were good or bad because the sound system took a break at this point. That was about 15 minutes of my life that I will never get back.
The most dramatic part of the evening came when the lady who sang “Lift Ev’ry Voice” returned to the stage for a “B” selection. She seemed to be a religion fanatic so she delivered a testimony before she BLESSED us with her song(s.) She went on to say that she saw a rainbow the previous day with only 3 colors and she knew it was a visual representation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. She announced that the DEVIL stole her lyrics so she was just going to let the LORD use her. She cocked her head back and manhandled the microphone as she spliced about 6 songs together starting with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow!” I almost lost my composure when she belted out… “Have you tried Jesus...He’s alright,” followed by “I Believe I Can Fly” and then back to Dorothy’s rainbow. The audience was wowed by this over zealous lyrical train wreck and several, including the comedian, even did a little praise dancing themselves. I was appalled at the whole spectacle.
During the closing remarks, the president of the Juneteenth Committee said, “We may not be where we need to be, but we SHOL ain’t where we started!” My question is when will we get there? We all know what we need to do to get there and it's not by behaving as minstrels or parading around an auditorium and blaming the DEVIL for one's lack of preparedness. Was the author correct who coined the following phrase: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
I’m going to petition the committee to have a Young Inventors Contest as a part of next year’s celebration. I’m creating the rubric as we speak so I can be a part of the solution.
I'm just reading this post, but u expose a painful truth.
ReplyDeleteTMedley