The oppression, mistreatment and disrespect of Black people are not only NOT coming to an end, they’re picking up steam.
Voter suppression laws have swept across the country, giving conservative (i.e. GOP, i.e. white) voters an outsized political impact beyond their numbers. Unarmed Blacks continue to be brutalized and killed by cops and cop wanna-bes. The political right has created a bogeyman in “critical race theory” that doesn’t even identify what critical race theory actually is.
Rather, they have successfully used the phrase as a rallying cry and dog whistle to hype up their voting base to stand against Black history, Black social commentary, Black authors, Black public figures, Black art, Black education and Black life.
Our story has literally been criminalized, and only Blackfolk seem to notice the similarities between what the modern-day Republican Party is doing with moves that are in lockstep with those initiated by Nazi Germany in their criminalization of all things Jewish, especially their scholars and intellectuals. In fact, to even make that obvious comparison/connection makes the person offering the observation (in this case, me) prone to attack.
But standing idly by, silently ignoring the outright war on Black citizenship, humanity and life is not an option. It’s never been an option for Blackfolk in this Babylon, if we want to survive to see another day.
Hence, activism has always been part of our story and our struggle. In the face of hundreds of years of lynching, redlining, land theft with 12 million acres stolen from Black farmers, Tuskegee and countless other medical apartheid-level experiments and “healthcare” mistreatment, and a gazillion other things… in the words of those heroic Tuskegee Airmen (the Red Tails), “We fight. We fight. We fight.”
It is in that Fannie Lou Hamer, Gloria Richardson, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., Paul Robeson, Fred Hampton tradition that we share an NNPA video with individuals who seek to answer the question, “What does activism look like in 2023?”
