Blog NKCDC How NKCDC is recognizing Juneteenth

New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC) is recognizing Juneteenth as a paid holiday for all staff, encouraging our staff who are BIPOC (Black, indigenous, or People of Color) to take the day to celebrate, and providing an optional opportunity for staff to engage with a facilitated discussion around this 2018 lecture by Dr. Robin DiAngelo: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

We all live in a racialized society that teaches us how to behave and react in ways that preserve racist systems. We will host a staff conversation about what it means to be antiracist and name what those commitments look like. 

Here are the discussion questions that we will start with and hope that they might be of use to you as well. 

  • How do we personally commit to advancing antiracism?
  • What does being antiracist mean for you personally?
  • What does being antiracist look like in your family? How will you teach and share anti-racism at home?
  • What should NKCDC do to be antiracist? What systems or structures perpetuate racism within the organization?

We celebrate Juneteenth because on June 19, 1865, news of the Emancipation Proclamation—which had been issued two and a half years earlier on January 1, 1863—finally reached African Americans in Texas, and they realized they were no longer enslaved. In the years that followed, celebrations of this Juneteenth holiday spread across the nation with food and arts festivals, civil rights demonstrations and events.