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misinformation
Juneteenth Is Not a History Lesson We Can Afford to Forget
A PragerU video about the holiday is an example of how history can become propaganda.
Jun 23, 2026
Juneteenth celebrations in my town were lit. There were so many events I had a difficult time choosing which ones to attend. As a grandmother, I ended up at the event on the grounds of the Historic Harriet Barber house (circa 1875) in Hopkins, South Carolina, where my daughter and her 3-year-old son were drumming. The celebration was filled with spirited performances, great food, and camaraderie. Historical reflections centered on the origins of Juneteenth, commemorating June 19, 1865, when African-descended people who were enslaved in Texas finally learned of their freedom—more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had officially declared them free. Many gave shout-outs to African American ancestors for all of their visions, sacrifices, and accomplishments. It was a joyful space.
While we are still in the Juneteenth celebratory spirit, we should not sleep, lest it will be another two-and-a-half years when we wake up and realize that our freedom has been lost through a series of recent institutional white supremacist political maneuvers such as: weakening voting rights; attacks on Black political districts, and bans on African American studies.
In his classic 1933 book, The Mis-Education of the Negro, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, father of Black History Month, warned Black people not to believe the lies taught in school that are full of distortions, intentional inaccuracies, and omissions. He also warned that one of the most effective tools of institutional white supremacy is to recruit Black voices to legitimize and advance ideas that work against Black liberation. Nearly 100 years later, we are still facing the revision and erasure of Black history.
For example, PragerU—a conservative website that promotes conservative viewpoints via digital media—has produced a series of edu-tainment videos full of revisionist historical distortions and half-truths.
Juneteenth reminds us that freedom is not simply a legal status. Freedom requires historical memory, vigilance, and the courage to question what we are told.
One video, "The Inconvenient Truth About Juneteenth," is narrated by a young Black man, Xaviaer. In the 56 second TikTok-style video, the narrator presents himself as an “influencer” and is casually walking down the street, iced coffee in hand, as he opines that Black folks are mentally enslaved for believing the conventional story about Juneteenth.
Immediately, evoking the name of Rosa Parks, Xaviaer signifies that Rosa should have made the viewers sit in the front of the bus and take a history class. The cleverness of the misinformation, though, is apparent when he says that Democrats kept Black people enslaved two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. This slight of hand fails to clarify that the ideologies of the Republican and Democratic parties switched around 1870. Before that time, Republicans controlled the government and used its power to protect Black people who were formerly enslaved and guarantee their civil rights during Reconstruction. Most Democrats, particularly in the South, opposed many of these efforts. However, as the nation shifted its attention toward economic growth and industrial expansion, support for Reconstruction began to wane. Many Northern Republicans became less willing to invest political capital in protecting Black rights in the South.
By the mid-to-late 1870s, the Republican Party had largely retreated from its commitment to reconstructing Southern society and safeguarding the rights of African Americans. Following the Compromise of 1877 and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, White Democrats regained political control across much of the region and systematically dismantled many of the gains Black people had achieved during Reconstruction. Over the following decades, political allegiances gradually shifted, and by the mid-20th century, many African Americans increasingly aligned with the Democratic Party, particularly as it became more supportive of civil rights initiatives.
Xaviaer concludes "The Inconvenient Truth about Juneteenth" by admonishing Black people for referring to Juneteenth as a Black Independence Day. He argues that the political left has repackaged the holiday through what he characterizes as a segregationist lens. He adds a mocking remark, suggesting that if viewers truly believe Juneteenth is a separate Black Independence Day, he does not want to see them "twerking on a boat" on the Fourth of July—not resisting the urge to slide in a stereotype.
The comment is intended to be humorous, but it serves a deeper purpose. By ridiculing those who celebrate Juneteenth, the video dismisses the historical reality that many enslaved African-descended people were excluded from the freedoms celebrated on July 4, 1776. Rather than engaging this historical contradiction, the video substitutes mockery for analysis and caricature for historical understanding.
From a critical perspective, Black people should not be getting history lessons from social media influencers, political propagandists, or organizations masquerading as educational institutions. History is too important.
Fortunately, other scholars have challenged the distortions and omissions that permeate traditional historical narratives. While Dr. Carter G. Woodson's The Mis-Education of the Negro remains one of the most important warnings about the dangers of accepting history uncritically, James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, exposed how textbooks sanitize and distort the past. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States intentionally centers the experiences of people who were oppressed, marginalized, and excluded from dominant historical accounts.
Misinformation is not merely about getting facts wrong. It is about shaping how people understand themselves, their communities, and their possibilities. Dr. Carter G. Woodson once reflected that it took him 20 years after earning his doctorate from Harvard University to recover from what he described as his intellectual conditioning. James Baldwin similarly observed that it took years to free himself from the myths and falsehoods he had been taught about race, history, and human worth.
The stakes are especially high when misleading narratives are packaged in entertaining videos designed to reach young people. And by the way, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, father of Black History Month, cautioned that one of the most effective tools of institutional white supremacy is to recruit Black voices to legitimize and advance ideas that work against Black liberation.
Juneteenth reminds us that freedom is not simply a legal status. Freedom requires historical memory, vigilance, and the courage to question what we are told and the understanding of the need to seek truth from credible sources.
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I'm Boycotting Trump's State of the Union and So Should You
If he doesn’t believe he’s my president, why should I treat him as my president and watch his State of the Union?
Feb 23, 2026
I’m not going to watch the State of the Union address Tuesday night. I urge you not to, either.
I hope Nielsen (or whoever makes such estimates these days) will find that far fewer Americans watched President Donald Trump’s State of the Union than have watched any other State of the Union in recent memory. It will drive Trump nuts.
There are plenty of other reasons for not watching.
First, he doesn’t deserve our attention. He’s abused and defiled the American presidency, even worse than he did in his first term.
I already know the real state of the union. It sucks.
He’s openly taken bribes. He’s blatantly usurped the powers of Congress. He has overtly used the Justice Department to punish people he considers his enemies and pardon people loyal to him. He has willfully rejected the rule of law, broken treaties, literally destroyed part of the White House, thumbed his nose at our allies (including our closest and heretofore loyal neighbors), and utterly failed his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. He lies like most people breathe. He’s a fraud and a traitor.
Second, we already know what he’s going to say because he’s already stated and restated his lies every chance he gets. He says the economy is in wonderful shape, that he’s settled six wars, that he’s brought peace to the Middle East, that he’s made America safer and more secure, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, ad nauseam.
He assumes that if he repeats these lies often enough, people will believe them. Why should we give him more of an audience for his lies?
Third, he refuses to be president of the United States but only of the people who voted for him in 2024.
He talks in glowing terms about “my” people while denigrating “them”—those of us who didn’t vote for him, who still disapprove of him, or who refuse to give him whatever he wants.
He won’t even fund so-called blue states. So far this year he’s axed over $1.5 billion in blue-state grants, contrary to the wishes of Congress.
If he doesn’t believe he’s my president, why should I treat him as my president and watch his State of the Union?
Fourth and finally, I already know the real state of the union. It sucks.
The economy has been good for big business and wealthy Americans but shitty for small businesses and average working Americans.
Although Trump repeatedly promised that his tariffs would reduce US imports, shrink the trade deficit, and lead to a revival in American manufacturing, the opposite has happened. The annual trade deficit in goods last year hit a record high. And US manufacturers cut 108,000 jobs.
In the 2024 election, Trump also promised to bring down prices, but inflation is still steaming ahead. Prices grew at an annual rate of 3% in December. He’s so out of touch with what most Americans are enduring that he calls the crisis of affordability “fake news.”
He promised to control immigration, but 6 out of 10 Americans think he’s gone “too far” by sending federal agents into American cities who have caused mayhem and murder.
He promised to avoid foreign entanglements, but he abducted the president of Venezuela, killed more than 150 Venezuelans, and is now planning to attack Iran.
His menacing the Middle East has created another inflation risk: The possibility that a key oil export route will be disrupted has caused the price of Brent crude to soar.
For all these reasons, I’m not going to watch Trump’s State of the Union. I recommend that you don’t, either.
Your senators and representatives in Congress should boycott it, too. You might call their offices to suggest this. (Some Democrats are already planning to skip it, opting instead for a counter-programming event on the National Mall dubbed “The People’s State of the Union.” Good!)
And why the hell should justices of the Supreme Court show up, especially after he says he’s “ashamed” of the six who decided his tariffs exceeded his authority—calling the three Democratic appointees a “disgrace to our nation” and the three conservatives who voted against him “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” “swayed by foreign interests,” and “an embarrassment to their families”?
Boycott the State of the Union. It’s the least we can do.
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America’s ICE Crisis Is Political and Psychological
A society cannot remain mentally healthy when its members are repeatedly told not to trust what they see, feel, or know.
Feb 06, 2026
Following the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, people are glued to their phones, televisions, and computer screens with both curiosity and dread. There is a pervasive feeling of unrelenting anxiety and fear. It creeps into otherwise ordinary moments, leaving people unmoored and unable to rest.
As therapists, we traditionally spend our time helping clients unpack what they are experiencing internally. But now, we are facing a moment when we don’t have to invest much in discovering what is causing that pervasive feeling of unease. It’s a collective experience causing individual pain.
There is a longstanding belief that therapy and politics should be kept separate, and that the treatment room ought to be sealed off from the chaos of the outside world. In quieter times, that is a reasonable expectation. But when fear, instability, and disinformation saturate the social atmosphere, pretending those forces stop at the therapy door becomes unrealistic and, at a certain point, irresponsible.
We are living through a period of sustained psychological assault. Constant chaos, relentless distortion, and the normalization of cruelty erode people’s internal sense of reality. When power is exercised without restraint or accountability, confusion and anxiety do not remain abstract. They show up as panic attacks, depressive collapse, insomnia, somatic symptoms, relational breakdowns, and despair.
It would be a mistake to minimize the pain people are experiencing right now or to underestimate how deeply it is shaping mental health.
This is not a partisan claim; it is a psychological one. When psychologically underdeveloped men become intoxicated by power, the effects are predictable and terrifying. Fear increases. Trust erodes. Nervous systems remain on high alert. People begin to doubt their own perceptions. Over time, this destabilization becomes chronic, not only for individuals but for the collective psyche.
Therapists are seeing this every day. Clients who once came to therapy for familiar struggles now arrive carrying an added layer of dread. People of color describe the fear of living in communities that feel increasingly targeted and unsafe. Protesters speak about the psychic toll of being criminalized for dissent. Immigrants and their families live with the constant anxiety of disappearance or deportation to foreign jails known as torture camps. Others describe something harder to name but no less corrosive—the sense that reality itself is no longer reliable.
Those outside the United States are not insulated from this either. When imperial powers posture and threaten, entire populations live in constant fear of destabilization or invasion.
History tells us that these cycles recur, and that eventually, they are resisted and reversed. However, that knowledge offers limited comfort to people living inside the rupture itself. It would be a mistake to minimize the pain people are experiencing right now or to underestimate how deeply it is shaping mental health.
What we call democracy in this country is valuable, but also deeply flawed. Systemic racism and a war on the poorest among us always have been standard fare.
But today, we seem to be entering a new phase where democratic norms are undermined openly and where cruelty is reframed as strength. When the truth is being treated as optional, the psychological cost is profound. A society cannot remain mentally healthy when its members are repeatedly told not to trust what they see, feel, or know.
This is where the fantasy that therapy exists in a political vacuum collapses. Policy decisions shape bodies, relationships, and futures. When people’s lives are destabilized by political forces, the reverberations show up in the quiet despair of the patient on the couch: What is happening? Why do I feel this way? What should I do?
Therapy is an act of reality restoration. It helps people reclaim their perceptions, reconnect with their values, and rebuild trust in themselves and others. Care, in this moment, is not passive. It requires naming harm, recognizing where terror is being manufactured and distributed, and understanding that the psychological health of a society depends on more than individual coping strategies. It depends on truth, accountability, and the protection of human dignity.
Therapists will continue to do what we have always done: Show up, listen carefully, and hold space for transformation. But we should not be asked to pretend that the storm outside has nothing to do with the distress inside. America’s crisis is not only political; it is psychological too.
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