If we're going to make a rant here, lets look at other things.  We all know that an African-American is a Black person.  A press release might go "African-American leaders condemed the Bush administration for not doing more on AIDS prevention. It is well known that AIDS is higher in the Black community than any other..."  Now go to a bookstore or library and and get a book on the civil rights movement, the JFK presidency, anything pre 1970, chances are on the parts with African-American leaders, it'll say "Kennedy meets with Negro Leaders."  If we listen to Dr. King's I have a Dream speech, we'll here about "the old Negro Spiritual...free at last free at last."  This is because the word Black did not come into the lexicon until James Brown sang Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," and Stokey Carmicheal agictated for Black Power, later in the decade.  In fact when Carmicheal started his Black Power speeches, it was Dr. King who said the words Black Power are offensive to white America and that'll ruin chances for integration.  However, Carmicheal was part of a younger group that held Malcolm X in higher esteem than Dr. King,though they may've respected the latter,they followed the former.

My point is, is there's nothing wrong with the wording of the bill, because slavery was called the "peculair institution" by Lincoln's age, and every age that preceeded it.  And if you still have a gripe then maybe we should lynch our historians.  Since this is a bad thing to do, I don't think people would endorse such a thing. I know I wouldn't since I like historians,history and consider myself somewhat of a historian.

I think a nice parallel is the gun parallel. Gun violence kills, therefore that's a good reason to wage war on China because they invented Gunpowder.

mean that it's referring to a historical term, not indicating any approval (or disapproval) of that term?  Maybe I'm just missing something here...

The term's origins are historic like any other term, but I've heard it used plenty of times by folks like older planter descendents.  They like these terms as well:

? of the Hebraic persuasion
? War of Northern Aggression
? lady of the night

The term was developed to defend slavery, and that's my main objection.

http://en.wikipedia....
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, a movement to end slavery grew in strength throughout the United States. This reform took place amidst strong support of slavery among white Southerners, who began to refer to it as the "peculiar institution" in a defensive attempt to differentiate it from other examples of forced labor.

http://www.answers.c...
Peculiar Institution was a euphemistic term that white southerners used for slavery. John C. Calhoun defended the "peculiar labor" of the South in 1828 and the "peculiar domestick institution" in 1830. The term came into general use in the 1830s when the abolitionist followers of William Lloyd Garrison began to attack slavery. Its implicit message was that slavery in the U.S. South was different from the very harsh slave systems existing in other countries and that southern slavery had no impact on those living in northern states.

The war of Northern Aggression, Jefferson Davis said that "all we want is to be left alone" and then midway through the war he signed a conscription bill that said unless a person had 20 negroes, he needed to fight. And Confederate regular Sam Watkins documents this. Now of course the planter class may've meant the full racist conatation of the "war of Northern Agression," but I'm pretty sure that there's this other group which thought along regular spirit of 76 lines, that never owned a slave but was protecting his home.

And looking at the full text of the Juneteenth bill, its not "WE OF THE SOUTH." Combine that with this is a Southern State originally, and our system of government is based on compromise and I really don't see the problem.  I'm more interested in the Virginia Indian quest for recognition, as I didn't know Virginia had Indian tribes to this day.  When I got my Celebrate Jamestown packet, they had information about this.

And that's another thing, I'm noticing, while its good to keep vigilance, the fact is that our government is slow for good reason. Netrooters seem to have too much impatience for its own good sometimes. 

"If Government were efficient, it'd be call a dictatorship"-Harry Truman

is part and parcel of archaic attitudes, and the various resolutions don't make use of obsolete language unless it involves race. The problem is that this is not only historic language, it was commonly the everyday language of 20th (and occasionally 21st) century segregationists, and its usage in this resolution codifies it. 

Regarding the tribes achieving recognition, Virgil Goode is part of the problem.

And as for your not having any awareness of the tribes of Virginia, you can thank those same 20th century segregationists, like Virginian eugenicist Walter Plecker and supporters of the so-called Racial Integrity Act of 1924.

To return to the topic, though they did not coin the phrase, the usage of "peculiar institution" remained alive and in vogue largely due to an influential group of committed segregationist elites in Richmond.  My problem is that as a native Richmonder, I recognize this phraseology as their legacy. 

To get a handle on the group I'm talking about, read The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922-1930: "Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro".

IN SEPTEMBER 1922 JOHN POWELL, A RICHMOND NATIVE AND WORLD-renowned pianist and composer, and Earnest Sevier Cox, a self-proclaimed explorer and ethnographer, organized Post No. 1 of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America. By the following June the organization claimed four hundred members in Richmond alone and had added new groups throughout the state, all dedicated to "the preservation and maintenance of Anglo-Saxon ideals and civilization." For the next ten years Powell and his supporters dominated racial discourse in the Old Dominion; successfully challenged the legislature to redefine blacks, whites, and Indians; used the power of a state agency to enforce the law with impunity and without mercy; fundamentally altered the lives of hundreds of mixed-race Virginians; and threatened the essence of the state's devotion to paternalistic race relations. (1)

The racial extremism and histrionics of the leaders of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs have attracted the attention of both legal scholars and southern historians, particularly those interested in the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, the major legislative achievement of the organization, and Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed three centuries of miscegenation statutes in the United States. (2) Historian Richard B. Sherman, for instance, has focused on the organization's leaders, "a small but determined group of racial zealots," who rejected the contention of most southern whites in the 1920s that the "race question was settled." Sherman, who has written the most detailed account of the legislative efforts of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs, has argued in the pages of the Journal of Southern History that the leaders of the organization constituted a "dedicated coterie of extremists who played effectively on the fears and prejudices of many whites." Convinced that increasing numbers of persons with traces of black blood were passing as white, they made a "Last Stand" against racial amalgamation. (3)