“If you’re paying attention to it politically, Black America has saved Joe Biden once again, and Black America has saved the Democratic Party. And it’s gonna deliver the White House to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. And Black folks need to be a priority. Period.”
-Carroll Robinson to the NNPA.
The frustration was written across my wife’s brow as she relayed the story of her failed attempt to convince a young brother to cast his first vote on election day.
She explained she hit all of the key points: we have to get that bigot out of the White House; our ancestors had fought and died for the opportunity to participate in the process; the only way for us to impact the system is to participate in it.
Nothing she said seemed to move the ‘young blood.’ He was either naïve, ignorant, or stuck on stupid.
Or was he?
His most familiar refrain, my wife said, was that ‘nothing changes’ regardless of who is in the White House. Even with Barack in the house, it didn’t alter the circumstances of those trapped in survival mode.
The young blood was not alone. The presidential election revealed an uptick in Black participation overall, but limited participation in some poverty zones.
Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 because of similar attitudes to what the brother exhibited, combined with a reluctance to vote for Hillary Clinton, who decided she didn’t need to campaign here, relying on the political pied piper and the assumption that even disenfranchised African Americans will follow the script.
She took the Black vote for granted (a common assumption by all Democrats) and lost the presidency because 25,000 apathetic Nubians stayed home.
That wasn’t the case this time around. Indeed, I have never seen the influx of money, resources, and voter encouragement campaigns I witnessed this year. It didn’t move the needle as much as we hoped, but it was enough to get the orange man to consider going back to his reality television show.
Because a Joe Biden presidency didn’t seem to generate as much enthusiasm as the orchestrators hoped, an essential strategy change shifted the emphasis from his promissory note to a ‘anybody but Trump’ campaign.
But even then, a significant number of Black young tribal members couldn’t see the forest for the trees, mainly since the trees in question were rotten timber, used for boarded-up houses and streets littered by wood by-products (along with glass and plastic bottles)
As a sister asked me a couple of months ago: “’day gonna do something about ‘dis shooting and killing?
“’Da gonna get me a job paying ’nuff for us to live on? If not, f…em.”
After laying out a few flirtatious lines about how becoming she looked in her purple wig (which, I noted, complimented her tattoos…one of which identified her as a ‘boss bitch in training’), I may have convinced her to change her mind about voting.
But I’m probably batting .500 because after explaining to another Millennial brother that the 11,891 Biden/Harris campaign ads he repeatedly referenced weren’t a list of certainties Biden would see to fruition, but instead a political ‘wish list,’ the brother’s demeanor changed.
Unless the senate flips (which is starting to look very unlikely unless two Georgia Democrats can win run-off elections), the likelihood of most of his proposals passing is remote. And even if the Democrats control both houses, other factors will come into play, as Barack Obama learned during his first two years in the White House.
Free college? They will say we ‘have money for war, but not for the poor.’
Enlarging the U.S. Supreme Court? Not as long as the filibuster remains intact. Even revengeful Democrats will probably take a chill pill when that proposal comes up.
End systemic racism?
Unless Nyame/God intervenes, you can forget that one too.
You can’t legislate attitudes, and given the fact that the majority of White Americans (54%) voted for a known bigot, it becomes even harder to see around the aforementioned trees.
Actually, each of the ‘political atheists’ mentioned earlier had legitimate—albeit myopic—points.
From a grass-roots perspective, presidential elections have resulted in little change for those at the bottom over the last century.
In 2008, Milwaukee led the nation in seven negative social indicators, including the widest academic achievement, Black male unemployment, and poverty rates.
We still hold that status.
Today, 40% of Black Milwaukeeans are living in poverty. Over 20,000 make less than $10,000 annually! Think about that?
If they can find housing that costs $500 a month; feed children noodles every day, and warm your home in winter with the stove or space heater, and jump ahead of the line to secure some aid, you might be able to elevate yourself to be ‘po, because they will not be able to afford the last two letters in the word ‘poor’ (‘o-r.’)
That’s not to say Barack Obama didn’t move the needle forward. His efforts made the world safer, addressed environmental concerns, and saved the auto industry. He pulled us from a recession, appointed more people of color to the federal courts than all previous presidents combined, his monumental health care bill extended the lives of millions.
Yet, the Black poverty rate went up under Obama. The wealth gap also widened, and educational apartheid continued to define and stagnate Black progress.
Biden may be an Obama protégé, but he’s also the author of the racist Omnibus Crime Bill. He was ripped by former presidential candidate, now his vice president (Kamala Harris) for his desegregation position.
But that’s neither here nor there. Most Black voters didn’t vote as much for Biden as they voted against 45IQ. Biden most likely will not serve out his term for the presumed eventuality and thus provide America with its first female and African American (or is she bi-racial?) president.
Whether she could win a presidential race on her own, even as an incumbent, will depend, in no small measure, on whether Biden will, or can, carry out a significant number of his ‘promises to Black America.’
History suggests that won’t happen because, generally, Black folks in this country are ignored or dissed after elections.
Or, to put it more succinctly, as maverick Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on ‘Meet the Press’ Sunday: while historically the Democratic Party exhibits great enthusiasm and interest for the grass root vote—Black and Latinos—after the elections ‘those communities are promptly abandoned.
Actually, this could be our best opportunity to force the Democratic Party to get serious about its so-called commitment to us.
When motivated, we are the most powerful special interest in the country. Even though we have never been paid our worth.
My inclination is to abandon their party and start our own. Negotiate from a position of strength. Do for selves what is not in their best interest to do for us.
But if we gotta’ play with their cards, it’s time to stop playing spades (pun intended) and start playing bid whist.
And now is a perfect time to do so.
The first step in this uncharted sojourn is to fine-tune our agenda, present it to the Biden Administration and demand he does all within his power to fulfill our mandate.
The second part of the plan would be to set a deadline. The midterm elections, in two years, is apropos. If movement is not made by then, stay at home, vote for an independent, or throw rocks at the castle walls.
In fact, this unprecedented election provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to take the donkey by the tail; to demand payback for our dedication and influence over the last half-century.
We should start by dusting off the half-dozen Black agendas that grew out of conferences, symposiums, and Black think tanks.
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, although a new generation of tribal warriors would be well warranted to put their stamp of approval on the plan, amending as needed.
We don’t have to waste time fighting over who should lead, take center stage, get credit or feed their egos since I can all but guarantee the script has already been written, starting with reinvestment in Black America in three general areas: economic development, criminal justice overhaul and a restructure and redefinition of public education, with the same options the Black middle class, politicians and poverty pimps enjoy.
Obviously, there is much more to the equation, some of which can’t (or won’t) be solved by the political conglomerate.
But we shouldn’t compromise on putting our interests before the environmentalist, LGBTQ community, women, plantation owners, missionaries, and poverty pimps.
Start with an urban ‘Marshall Plan,’ a business bank to provide forgivable loans and insurance to Black startups, a new affirmative action program with the teeth (which ironically, Bill Clinton—Hilliary’s hubby—removed to appease other special interests), a redefinition of public education, and an overhaul of the criminal justice system.
Or, we’ll take reparations as an alternative.
Give us our just due, 40 acres and a mule (or GMC), and allow us to do for self; to build a nation within a nation.
Let us develop a distribution process based not only on need but pragmatic policies that will enrich our community, restore a spiritually grounded cultural paradigm and establish an educational system that serves all children—a system of schools versus a government school system.
Our tribe needs to have a family dinner discussion on how the political system works, how we impact it, what we should get for our participation.
After the desert, we should take a survey to determine how the political system can and should impact the myriad problems uniquely stagnating Hue-men’s, Coloreds, Negroes, Black folks, and African Americans.
Finally, we need to combine a history (His-story) class with civics and language arts to analyze the differences between symbolism and substance.
As Frederick Douglass once lamented, ‘power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did and it never will.’
In other words, we get nothing if we don’t demand anything.
Let me add to Douglass’ famous saying that “demand without a weapon to back it up is akin to a fifth-grader debating Howard Fuller.”
This year has been the most unusual in history with the elections, pandemic, massive unemployment, and political polarization that has served no one. It can also be of an awakening, offering a pathway to empowerment.
Or, we can keep doing the same things and expecting a different result.
(It’s called ‘stupidity’ folks!)
Hotep.
I can’t remember ever hearing the word ‘dichotomy’ while attending a segregated Milwaukee government school back in the 60s.
In fact, I definitely didn’t use the word since I didn’t know what it meant.
Yet, since adulthood, it has become one of my most frequently used expressive nouns, particularly since understanding how the word influenced my life journey as a journalist and African American—which is itself a dichotomous phrase.
Had I known what it meant back in my formative years, I could have used it to explain the thoughts that went through my mind when we (civil rights marchers) confronted bigots and racists-in-training on the other side of the 16th Street Viaduct in support of an open housing ordinance.
It would be an appropriate word to explain the disingenuous scenario in which we, Americans by birth and constitutional right, and Black by divine blessing, were forced to demonstrate to convince the city to rescind discriminatory laws that forbade us from living outside an area designated for Negroes, zombies, and poverty pimps.
It would have also been an appropriate word to explain why we were forced to attend overcrowded and inadequately funded government schools in dilapidated buildings.
White kids were assigned to newer schools with chemistry and science labs and state of the art athletic facilities.
It wasn’t ‘just’ that we were intellectually inferior (in white peoples’ minds). But, as the president of the Milwaukee school board explained, we were uncivilized, and if ‘integrated’ would “urinate in the water fountains.”
(That’s an actual statement.)
Dichotomous would have been the first word to come to mind when I heard white war protestors calling us (returning Viet Nam veterans) ‘baby killers’ and ‘pawns of imperialism’ as we walked through the San Francisco Airport terminal following a 16-hour flight from that war-torn Southeast Asian country.
Obviously, that scenario epitomized the definition of the word, but not as much as the awakening I underwent several months earlier when I experienced one of the most frightening episodes of my young life.
I was assigned to escort an officer to a small base at the southern tip of Vietnam. As it turned out, we separated upon arrival, and I was on my own for the next three days.
It was the most horrifying 72 hours of my tour.
When I entered the base’s mess tent, the occupants of the table I sat at promptly removed themselves. The same scenario followed when I entered the barracks.
The truth of my predicament didn’t really come to light until an hour later, when I entered the shack constructed for R&R.
It was a simple facility, a couple of speakers connected to a reel to reel player, a card table, and a makeshift bar.
It was as I was approaching the bar that the lightbulb went on.
Behind the bar was a large Confederate flag!
There was no mistaking why no one talked to me or even acted with civility. Some reeked of racism, and it quickly dawned on me that I was an easy target, being the only brother on the small base.
I kept my distance from the wanna-be Rebels during the day; walking off base despite its dangers.
At night, I slept with my .45, a round chambered, and the safety off.
I was prepared to ‘defend’ myself.
The enemy was not the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong, but white men who referred to them as ‘zips’ and ‘sloop heads.’
If a racist used an epithet to describe the ethnicity of those he supposedly fought for, it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what he thought of me.
And the ‘dichotomy’ of that particular situation?
Here I was 10,000 miles from home, supposedly fighting for a concept alongside people who refused to see those they fought for, or me, as equals.
Racists who hated and scorned us because of our skin color. U.S. military personnel who supported a manifestation of white supremacy in a country caught up in a civil war between two minorities.
The cherry on top was the fact that I was putting my life at risk for concepts that I would not enjoy when I returned ‘home,’ if I wasn’t lynched in the interim by Americans whose ancestors probably held mine in slavery. Or wished they could.
Dichotomy? In red, white and blue.
Those thoughts came back to me a couple of days ago when I responded to a Quora internet question that asked if ‘Black soldiers were treated the same as white soldiers when we returned home?’
I confirmed that we were denounced by young, white anti-war protestors, but those scenes were not replicated when we returned to the ‘hood.’
To older African Americans, we were heroes. To many younger ones, we were fools.
Not just because Vietnam was a ‘poor man’s’ war in which the rich sent us to die so their children wouldn’t have to, but also because, as Muhammad Ali declared when he refused to be drafted: ‘No Vietnamese ever called me ‘nigger’ (n-word).’
Yeah, dichotomy.
Ali’s analysis was replicated by many African American leaders of the era. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. questioned the rationale for the war, which some theorized prompted his assassination.
King and Malcolm X didn’t agree on much but were in solidarity in their opposition to the West’s exploitation of Third World nations.
From that perspective, we—veterans– were complicit in the domination of the exploited.
You may have been taught—or probably not–Vietnam was a French colony prior to the ‘civil war,’ and when the Algerians started a revolution to throw the French out of their country, it weakened their position in the Middle East.
In some respects, I felt like the Black revolutionary war patriots, starting with Crispus Attucks, who died for a concept that Black people of his era would not have been allowed to enjoy.
I recently read of one slave who helped trick the British into believing the colonial army assembled outside of Yorktown was much larger than it actually was, prompting the British commander to keep his troops there instead of invading the southern states as he had planned.
That decision ultimately tipped the war in the colonist’s favor.
Think about that dichotomous and disingenuous scenario.
Not only did the British offer freedom to any slave who sided with them, but the slave in question never saw the light of liberty he helped secure for the Americans.
He was an African slave under the cruelest and inhumane system in history.
Yet he fought against those who would have provided him with freedom!
I haven’t worn a $25 t-shirt I purchased honoring the Buffalo soldiers for the same reason I didn’t wear my uniform after returning from Nam.
The Buffalo soldiers were put into the same dichotomous predicament that my fellow Vietnam vets were ‘forced’ into.
The freed slaves who formed the famous Army cavalry unit following the civil war had as their primary mission the protection of whites who invaded—and all but exterminated—Native Americans.
The Natives created the moniker ‘Buffalo’ soldier because from a distance, that’s what the African ‘American’ troops looked like.
And like a herd of Buffalo, they trampled on the natives, grinding them into dusk.
Obviously, on most occasions when the term dicthotomy comes to mind has nothing to do with my, or our, military service.
Indeed, our lives in America provide a blueprint for a new reality show called ‘Da Dichotomy.’
It is aptly appropriate to describe our being America’s foster children. Or you can apply it to our love (if that’s a fitting definition) for our country—our abuser— which history shows not only didn’t love us in return but has done to us what Donald Trump has done to our health and well being.
Ask Native Americans if they love the country that denied them citizenship—in their own homeland—until the 20th century! Or the Japanese who they interned during WWII.
But at least both of those groups got reparations. All we’ve received is a second class education, pork guts and $24,000 televisions from Rent-a-Center.
I’ve posited on several occasions my struggle to be a ‘good’ Christian. The dichotomy being we cultivate a theology that condones the evil institution of slavery. A religion that was used to justify the murder of millions of our ancestors.
I haven’t figured it out yet, but I don’t worship a blue-eyed, blond-haired Jeshua.
Another dichotomy?
With one or two exceptions, I’ve voted Democrat in every national election. But I would never join the party because, in word and deed, it has prioritized other special interests above its most loyal supporters—us.
Under the teacher’s union’s thumb, the party opposes programs to allow poor Black children to attend the schools teachers and politicians send their children to.
My greatest fear is the Biden/Harris administration will end the programs that allow Black families to escape failing schools. (Remember, Barack Obama tried to derail the D.C. scholarship program. But he then sent his precious daughters to an exclusive private school.)
I love Obama but wouldn’t join his party if Michelle, Oprah or the ghost of John Lewis asked me to. I’ll remain independent, viewing the Dems and Republicans as different wings on the same bird.
I could use the same rationale for canceling my membership to the NAACP.
I support the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and some of the organization’s programs. But as its Freedom Fund keynote speaker, Black journalist Roland Martin declared a few years back, the organization today is but a shadow of its former ‘independent’ self.
The venerable civil rights organization is now under the control of special interests and corporations. Worse still, it doesn’t see the dicthotomy of blocking the schoolhouse door that leads to education options for poor Black children failed by the government system.
And like the Democratic Party, the NAACP offers nothing but excuses and false hopes, refusing to even question Milwaukee’s nation-leading failures– lowest reading and math proficiency rates, academic achievement gap and drop out rates in the United States of America, Canada, England, and Cuba.
It is a penultimate dichotomy that I risk my status as a ‘Colored man’ to raise these concerns; hang our dirty laundry in public. The paradox is that an African American isn’t truly Black if he doesn’t vote for the Democratic Party candidate (Biden told us), leaves the plantation, or acts like an uppity Negro and questions party policies or its agenda to make us comfortable in our misery as the poverty pimps get rich off us.
Which brings me to my most glaring definition of ‘dichotomy.’
Can you ever be free of racism—if that is our goal—when you call and view yourselves as ‘niggers’ (n-word)?
I don’t know about yours, but my God—Nyame, Jehovah, Allah— didn’t create niggers (n-word).
Instead, we were made in His/Her image. We were the first ‘Hue-man’ beings, and our ancestors were blessed to be the architects of math, science, and medicine.
Can we be both blessed and cursed? Or curse ourselves? Now THAT’s a dichotomy!
Hotep.
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