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Despite seceding along with most of the rest of the southern states at the beginning of the Civil War, Texas always existed on the periphery of the conflict. Although Gen. Robert E. Lee formally surrendered on April 9, 1865, confederates in the Lone Star State didn’t lay down their arms until June 2. And it wasn’t until June 19 that a Union general landed on Galveston Island to declare the last of America’s slaves free.
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free,” Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger decreed [ [link removed] ]. “This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves ...”
While June 19th has been informally celebrated ever since, Texas didn’t officially declare Juneteenth a state holiday until 1980. And the federal government only followed suit decades later, when President Joe Biden took the holiday nationwide in 2021.
Many hoped such a move would advance reconciliation among Americans of all backgrounds, if only a little. But seeing today’s racial resentments and strident identity politics, national unity is far, far off.
In fact, Americans’ views on the state of race relations have grown significantly more pessimistic of late. But this was not always the case. As recently as 2013, a Gallup tracking poll [ [link removed] ] showed that 72% of whites and 66% of Blacks rated race relations as very or somewhat good. This mirrored similar numbers going back to 2001, when the pollster first measured opinions on the matter.
This more positive mood from slightly more than a decade or so ago was evident in President Barack Obama’s 2013 commencement address at Morehouse College. Located in Atlanta, the historically Black school has educated young Black men since the end of the Civil War, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock—even actor Samuel L. Jackson.
On that day, 11 years ago, most of Obama’s speech focused on those virtues every American applauds: hard work, fatherhood, personal sacrifice and serving your fellow man. He didn’t whitewash the bloody legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but insisted those crimes wouldn’t prevent young Black men from achieving greatness.
“Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was,” Obama told the graduates [ [link removed] ] on that rainy Sunday. “Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination,” the president said [ [link removed] ]. “And moreover, you have to remember that whatever you’ve gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured. ... And if they overcame them, you can overcome them, too.”
This is a message every college graduate needs to hear, regardless of their background.
The importance of family was another high note. “Keep setting an example for what it means to be a man,” Obama said. “Be the best husband to your wife, or to your boyfriend, or your partner. Be the best father you can be to your children. Because nothing is more important.”
This responsibility extends to our neighborhoods and beyond, Obama added. “Be a good role model, set a good example for that young brother coming up. It’s not just the African-American community that needs you. The country needs you. The world needs you.”
This is the Obama who won election and reelection. The orator who preached American values and common cause. Sadly, his actions often strayed far from his rhetoric.
Just one year later, race relations took a big hit with the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. The police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown was quickly politicized, eventually resulting in riots in August and November 2015.
In a similar controversy, Freddie Gray died while in custody of the Baltimore Police Department, sparking riots in that city the following year. With the prevalence of 24/7 news coverage and the virality of social media, the turmoil quickly spread to other cities.
According to Gallup [ [link removed] ], just 51% of whites and 45% of Blacks viewed race relations as very or somewhat good in 2015. This marked a 21 percentage point drop among both groups polled. It would get worse.
In the wake of these and other incidents, police in many places pulled back from proactive policies, creating what was dubbed “the Ferguson effect.” [ [link removed] ] Distrust and hostility toward law enforcement resulted in local increases in crime, while many politicians thought it best to look the other way.
With the 2020 death of George Floyd, this effect not only intensified but went national. Cities burned, crime soared, and mobs demanded the defunding of police departments. But perhaps the larger impact was sociological. The Black Lives Matter movement mainstreamed racial grievance and many Americans, white and Black, cheered it on. During the summer and fall of 2020, what became known as the “George Floyd Protests [ [link removed] ]” rocked more than 140 cities across the country, often degenerating into destructive riots.
Meanwhile, attitudes about the state of race relations dropped further, with 43% of whites and a mere 33% of Blacks in 2021 holding a positive view. Enter President Joe Biden to sprinkle kerosene on the flames.
Biden has a long history of stoking racial grievance, choosing whichever position will help him in the moment. After promising a post-Trump return to normalcy, he rarely misses an opportunity to divide.
This was amply demonstrated with his own commencement address to Morehouse [ [link removed] ] College last month. Biden brought a strikingly different tone from Obama.
The 2011 calls to virtue were replaced with victimhood, pure and simple. “You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race,” Biden hollered [ [link removed] ]. “It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you.”
“What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street?” Biden ranted. “What is democracy if a trail of broken promises still leave Black communities behind? What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot? And most of all, what does it mean, as we’ve heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?”
Where Obama claimed “nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination,” Biden insisted that’s all we should care about. His message was as toxic as his oratory was clumsy; successful Black graduates are victims despised by their own country.
According to Biden, these young men can never succeed by working smart and hard, but only through the largesse of the doddering 81-year-old in the Oval Office. He’ll hand them money, canceling their student loans and replacing them with new loans to start businesses.
And if they dare not vote for him in November? “Old ghosts in new garments seize power,” and “extremists come for the freedoms you thought belonged to you and everyone.”
How far we’ve fallen in just 11 years.
Despite the often-divisive rhetoric from Donald Trump, the recently convicted ex-president was downright optimistic about race in his May speech in the Bronx [ [link removed] ]. Standing amidst a rowdy crowd of all colors, Trump focused on economic opportunity for everyone—in his own unique way.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re Black or brown or white, or whatever the hell color you are,” he said in a 90-minute, unscripted monologue [ [link removed] ]. “It doesn’t matter, we are all Americans, and we’re going to pull together as Americans.”
Pointing to his time in office, he bragged of the “record low poverty rate for Black Americans and Hispanic Americans” and compared his record with Biden’s.
“Real earnings for African-Americans are down 5.6%. African Americans are getting slaughtered, Hispanic Americans are getting slaughtered, and these millions and millions of people that are coming into our country, the biggest impact, and the biggest negative impact is against our Black population and our Hispanic population.”
He stressed the economic benefits to all Americans, rather than special carve-outs for special interest groups. Trump even ended up his rally with endorsements from Bronx rappers Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, which were met with chants of “USA! USA!” from the cheering crowd.
Trump only received [ [link removed] ] 6% of the Black vote in 2016, a number that rose to 12% [ [link removed] ] in 2020. But according to a recent Pew Research poll [ [link removed] ], 18% of registered Black voters are leaning toward Trump this year.
Racial division is a dead, and deadly, end. It seems many Americans, of every color, want all of us to succeed. Together.

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