It’s fair to say this Juneteenth that Black America is suffering Black fatigue. Mary-Frances Winters, who coined the term “Black fatigue,” calls it the personal and collective exhaustion of navigating widespread anti-Black racism. In 2026, such fatigue follows opponents of the Civil Rights Movement scoring a major victory at the Supreme Court in their long war against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While it is dispiriting that Black people were better off last Juneteenth than this one, we shouldn’t despair that we have inevitably entered another nadir of Black life. Despair would betray the spirit of Juneteenth and be an abandonment of this country that Black culture helped shape.
Of all the things Black people have contributed to America and its culture — from inoculation against disease to Blues and rock ‘n’ roll and the modern blood bank — the most consequential is liberal multiracial democracy.
A slave state cannot be a democracy.
Though some may argue America has always been a liberal democracy, the founders, after a shameful compromise, created a slave state, and a slave state cannot be a democracy. The following century, the political parties’ compromise to end Reconstruction created an apartheid state, and an apartheid state can’t be a liberal democracy either.
Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “1619 Project” reminds us that Black Americans never limited their vision of democracy to Black people. They pushed for birthright citizenship to be enshrined in the 14th Amendment. Later, during a civil rights revolution that culminated in the 1960s, Black Americans brought about a multiracial democracy with a series of landmark legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected everyone from racist discrimination; the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed the racist quotas that kept millions of non-white people from immigrating here; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected all citizens, including white ones, from being improperly denied ballots; and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 outlawed housing discrimination. As Hannah-Jones has reminded us, that Black vision of a multiracial democracy paved the way for the freedom movements led by women, immigrants, disabled people and queer people. All of those movements have demanded that America live up to its declared ideals.
Juneteenth is a reminder that America can always be better than it is. Thus, the day belongs to anyone who embraces the right of everybody to be free from oppression.
Nicholas Mitchell
Nicholas Mitchell is an assistant professor of curriculum studies at the University of Kansas. He is a curriculum theorist whose scholarship focuses on the intersection of education theory, policy and practice. He is the author of “On Bigotry” by Bloomsbury Publishing.