Hey! Did you hear something? No? Just dead silence?
That’s strange, because right about this time last year, and all the months leading up to the November 2024 Presidential Election, a lot of folk had a whole lot to say.
In fact, they wouldn’t shut the hell up.
Even before July 21, 2024, when then-President Joe Biden officially dropped out of the race and threw his support behind then-Vice President Kamala Harris, there was a loud and proud contingent of Blackfolk who used every GOP/Russian bot-fed argument to convince other brothers and sisters that voting was a waste of time.
Voting attacks
They came at it from multiple angles:
- Both main parties are exactly the same,
- Voting has never delivered anything to our communities
- Whoever wins the presidency won’t matter
- We should stop voting on the lesser of two evils
- If you do vote, only focus on local elections because those federal offices don’t really affect our day-to-day.
Wow. Try telling any of that nonsense today to the hundreds of thousands of Black and Brown folk who lost jobs, scholarships, research funding, housing, Job Corps programs and more. Even though one party (the Republicans) promised this result, by killing anything they deemed smelled of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), and the other party (the Dems) pledged to fight for all the diversity, equity and inclusion possible.
Try arguing that the federal office of the President hasn’t impacted the day-to-day of elected officials who have been arrested for fighting for the rights of poor folk and people of color. Or the thousands of folk being deported, even though the Project 2025 authors said they were only going to go after the “bad” immigrants.
We were warned
If only someone had warned Black America that Election 2024 was a choice between preserving and potentially expanding the little piece of democracy America has left, and the move to make this land a white nationalist dictatorship. Oh, wait. Only a gazillion folk sounded this alarm. Repeatedly. Including the “eleven-teen million” articles and op-eds written by the Defender.
And with all their “voting-doesn’t-matter” chatter, social media posts, podcast rants and meetings with the Project 2025 “messiah” to see what he had to offer Blackfolk, we ain’t heard a dayum thing from them clowns since. But we did feel their impact, as they convinced hundreds of thousands of us to sit out that election.
Kamala’s Blackness
But wait, the silence of the lames doesn’t just include that group. Lord have mercy, when VP Harris became the official presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, an army of “skinfolk” preached she wasn’t really Black, or at least not Black enough. Our people were sounding more like Donald than Donald.
And popular radio hosts, including Charlamagne the gawd-dayum, went all-in on misinformation, dumbing down the electorate into believing Harris was about to lock brothers up from “sea to shining sea.”
They pointed to Harris’s record as the California Attorney General. But these false profits didn’t read the fine print. Hell, they ignored the big, bold print, which revealed Harris to be just the opposite—a reformist DA who created programs to give folk second and third chances rather than lock’em up and throw away the key.
Has anyone heard from this posse? Anyone?
Then, some portion of the Knee-Grow contingent spewed the nonsense that Jamaicans weren’t Black.
Since when? They were with Bob Marley, Patrick Ewing, Lester Holt, Harry Belafonte, Al Roker, Uncle Luke, Naomi Campbell, Bushwick Bill, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Marcus Garvey, etc., all of whom we celebrate for their Black excellence… with their Jamaican ancestry-havin’ behinds.
But when Kamala ran for the highest office in the land, some of our people declared Jamaicans weren’t Black. Probably the same folk arguing today that Harriet Tubman never really existed.
Even church-mouse-quiet Janet Jackson screamed that asinine nonsense. It was one thing for The Donald to talk that noise, but Janet Privacy Control? Mayne! And it eroded support for an election outcome that would have produced a much different 2025 reality than what we’re experiencing now.
Then, there was the herd of celebs and pseudo-celebs who openly chose to ride the jock of someone who has been sticking it to Black people for decades. And, of course, there are those Blacks for Trump who voted out of their affinity for white proximity.
White rage
But what’s crazy to me is, even whitefolk who were Trump ride-or-dies, have been bum-rushing GOP town halls nationwide, because they’re pissed, and are demanding that their elected officials stand up to the person they themselves voted into office.
For months now, these almost lily-white gatherings have shown Trump-voting Republicans cursing out and booing their congresspersons and senators for allowing Trump and Musk to implement everything Trump and Musk promised to implement.
These pissed Republicans were cool with the idea that Trump’s policies would kick Black people in the collective nuts. But when they realized their own people were the biggest DEI recipients, and that Trump really was going to end Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP and Headstart, programs utilized by more whites than any other demographic, they lost their collective minds.
So much so that many of them were part of the 12.1 million folk who participated in the 2,000-plus “No Kings” nationwide protests on June 14. Even they are losing their minds at the idea that Trump has upped the militarization of the police and the “police-ization” of the military. Even they are outdone by the fact that it’s not just the “criminal illegals” that this administration is deporting, but the workers who pick their fruit, manicure their lawns, build their homes and nanny their kids.
Deafening silence
But while Trump’s voters are voicing their disgust, where are the Blackfolk who told us voting didn’t matter, or that Kamala wasn’t Black enough, or that all parties are the same, or that Trump is the “messiah” we need?
For all their big talk, loud pronouncements, and pre-2024 election megaphone bluster, these MFs (misinformed folk) ain’t uttered a dayum word since.
To call them lame is an understatement. To label them complicit in the madness we’re all facing is more on point, but still doesn’t do justice to the damage they helped facilitate.
But, for them to be silent in this moment… I don’t even have words for that. Or, at least, not words I can get away with publishing here. Still, their silence says a lot.
