YMMV / TPF: Louder and Prouder S2 E10 "Juneteenth"

• Anvilicious: It heavily condemns celebrating slaveowners and whitewashing their legacy.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Brother Kwame tells the students about Lincoln allowing slavery to exist in some Union States and wanted to deport the slaves. Apart from the fact that this oversimplified the truth, but, apart from its relation to slavery, it had nothing to do with the town founder being a slave owner nor is it ever mentioned later.
• Broken Aesop:
  • The main message is to talk about the truth, but many facts surrounding the history of the town doesn't jell with actual history the state is supposed to take place in and regarding slavery.
  • The other message is focusing on white privilege and fragility, but Wizard Kelly, a black man, far outranked Barry for reasons that had nothing to do with white privilege. Thus, one could say money and power superseded anything to do with race.
  • In an episode chastising the previously mentioned subject above, they endorse the book, White Fragility, which became controversial for stating that racism is a combination of prejudice and power and therefore black people can't be racist, which was seen by its detractors as promoting racial Double Standards.
• Critical Dissonance: The episode was praised by critics for its attempt to talk about racism, particularly revisionist history and how many celebrated historical figures took part in it by owning slaves. However, many fan and audience reactions were very poor as they tackled racism in a poor way to look progressive and relevant, as well as the reasons below.
• Don't Shoot the Message: This episode's message about fighting revisionism and speaking the truth is a very good message. Despite this, however, the episode itself takes a number of liberties with people and events in American history, such as having the town founder's history as a slave owner be so completely scrubbed that you can't find it even on the dark web (which is ludicrous in this day and age), taking a black-and-white stance that no slaveowner should ever be admired (even though many of the Founding Fathers happened to own slaves, making them more complex figures), and giving an unjust Historical Villain Upgrade to, of all people, Abraham Lincoln.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • While Barry is treated as stubborn for not instantly believing Maya about Emily's journal, one can be skeptical if it was a forgery due to how it suddenly turned up and no other information could verify its credibility.
  • The episode treats admiration for a slave owner like Christian A. Smith as absolutely wrong and views him as an irredeemable monster. The issue in real life many historical American figures are admired for their positive contributions despite being slave owners themselves and are treated as complex figures who were products of their time. So, it seems weird the episode doesn't consider that for Christian A. Smith. If he really was as horrible as he’s made out to be, the episode doesn’t elaborate how.
• Moral Event Horizon: Wizard Kelly siccing his armed goons on a bunch of protesting teenagers on top of arresting their parents for supporting them, keeping in mind that he did this to defend the reputation of a white slaveowner, is considered to officially be the worst thing he's ever done.
• Narm: Randy calling out to Barry to "Do something with your white privilege!" when Maya and the other kids are being swarmed by cops in riot gear. It’s a call-back to the previous scene Randy bringing up white privilege and even giving Barry a book on it when the latter doesn’t believe Christian A. Smith's (the town founder and a distant relative of Barry's) potential history as a slave owner, many viewers thought it was too on the nose, forced, and inappropriate for the scene. Some suggested changing it to Randy instead telling Barry to use his power as a cop to stop them, which he actually does in the scene and ironically is powerless to stop them and is arrested with everyone else by the order of a wealthy black man, who by being rich and running their town has more privilege than Barry, a white cop.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: A one episode occurrence, but while most of her actions in previous episodes have been met with criticism and vitriol from fans, some have admitted Maya herself was ok in this episode, as she doesn’t really exhibit any of her negative traits like her holier than thou-ness or hypocrisy.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Or in this case, characters. We actually find out that Emily had descendants after she was freed, and they attend the renaming ceremony and dedicating a statue to her. It would have been interesting to see Barry interact with them, and they could tell him more about her family history after she was freed, but they are only in one scene and don't even talk. They also could have been the ones to have the diary instead of it being buried near the statue and shown it to the town to get the facts straight about Christian A. Smith.
  • We're not told anything about Christian A. Smith apart from the fact that he’s Barry’s ancestor who founded Smithville and he was actually a slave owner. The mention of him being a humanitarian is overlooked compared to his slaver status. There is also the fact he lived from 1800 to 1875 and it's never shown whether he changed his views over time or stuck to them.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The episode brings up Lincoln's original plans to deport slaves but forgets to mention he later abandoned that idea once his views on slavery shifted from a political issue to a moral one, which some historians say his friendship with Frederick Douglass helped. Mentioning this would have perfectly paralleled Barry getting over his hesitation to address his ancestor's status as a slave owner thanks to his husband Randy.

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