What Juneteenth means (and what it doesn't)

We're back! And this season we're talking about the language of race — how specific words and phrases carry more than their share of weight when we’re talking, and when we think we’re listening. In this first episode, we cover something we're hearing a lot about this week in particular: Juneteenth. Some honor Juneteenth and others wonder what it is, knowing only that it vaguely has something to do with Black people and slavery. It’s both complicated and it isn’t, and Derrick White, Professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky, helps us understand it.