News/Commentary

Ramaswamy wants to cancel ‘useless’ Juneteenth, replace it with Election Day holiday

August 8, 2023 | | Print Article

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called Juneteenth a “useless” holiday and suggested that it should be canceled and replaced with a national day of voting.

Ramaswamy, an author and entrepreneur who has been dubbed the “CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.,” has been a refreshing presence on the campaign trail for his takes as a non-politician, and in today’s racially sensitive environment, few ideas could be as provocative as ending the newest national holiday signed into law by President Joe Biden in June 2021, a year after the George Floyd race riots.

The candidate’s remarks, which were first reported by NBC News, were delivered while he was speaking to a crowd of voters in Iowa over the weekend where he proposed single-day voting with Election Day being declared a national holiday and Juneteenth National Independence Day being dropped in order to make room for it.

“Single-day voting, on Election Day,” he told the crowd. “We will make Election Day a holiday in the United States of America so there’s no complaints about it, cancel Juneteenth or one of the other useless ones we made up.”

(Video: YouTube/NBC News)

When confronted by a reporter who asked him whether he believed that Juneteenth was a useless holiday, Ramaswamy said “I basically do” and was then asked whether he believes that other national holidays like Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day are useless holidays as well, answering that he doesn’t, he then explained his thoughts.

“I think that if we made a national commemorative holiday for everything that’s important that happened in our history, we’d have no working days left,” he said. “But I think that the spirit of Juneteenth, we already channel into other holidays, like Martin Luther King Day, like Presidents Day. I think we can commemorate the spirit of that holiday separately, so I think that we shouldn’t have redundant holidays that celebrate overlapping purposes. It should have a distinct purpose.”

“And I think, let’s be honest,” he continued, “the reason for making it a holiday was under political duress. It was a political hostage situation on the back of the death of George Floyd, and I think that that should not be how we create holidays.”

“We should not create holidays with a cultural gun to our head, and that’s what happened with Juneteenth,” he said.

Critics, at least the ones who aren’t screaming racism, pointed out that Ramaswamy has made comments supportive of Juneteenth in the past, including a video message less than two months ago.

“Juneteenth is a new holiday so we still have a chance to define what it means to us. It needn’t be about grievance & self-flogging. Let it be a celebration of the American Dream itself,” the candidate tweeted to commemorate the occasion.

Long a local holiday, Juneteenth marked the day that slaves in Galveston, Texas belatedly learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation and that the Civil War was over.

“The emancipation of enslaved black Americans didn’t mark the end of America’s work to deliver on the promise of equality. It only marked the beginning,” Biden said when he signed the holiday into law. “We can’t rest for the promise of equality is fulfilled for every one of us in every corner of this nation. That, to me, is the meaning of Juneteenth.”

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Chris Donaldson
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