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Progress for Blacks
2020 Racial Protests
Backlash
Trump 2.0, Overt institutionalized racism. Ending all equity measures, including DEI, etc. DOGE’s cutting the jobs of 319,000 Black women within the first 6 months of the administration. Cancelling police accountability measures, reversing judicial rulings for police oversight and repair. Firing of Black military officials and cancellation of Black officer promotions. Changing back the names of ships, military bases, schools that honored Confederate traitors. Massive immigration abuses and deportations. GUTTING OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT.
As progressive movements go, the 2020 uprising after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery must have been among the most threatening to the racial status quo. Record numbers of regular people of all colors and ages suddenly took to the streets demanding justice for Blacks. And they made an impact. Organizations rushed to create or bolster their equity programs. Anti-racism programs popped up everywhere. Schools, roads, and military bases named for Confederate traitors were renamed. Confederate statues came down. White inferiority complex (formerly white supremacy, but there's nothing supreme about it) panicked and re-elected the most regressive and racist administration imaginable in this day and age.
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This laid bare what we needed to see. Belief in white supremacy is embedded in the foundation of our country. We cannot hope or ignore it away. Black people have always told us it was right here, but we foolishly thought the problems were anecdotal, things bad people did, things people did in the old days. Now we know: the monster is and was right here, destroying everything we’ve built to create a real democracy. And they’ve got a stronghold because we’ve ignored the truth.
It’s uncomfortable to know the horrific things that have been done to make us the rich and powerful country we are and to create such a secure position for whites. Our culture has spent centuries assuring white people that violent policing is necessary, that caging Black people is needed for public safety, that their complaints are self-serving and overblown, and that they themselves are to blame for not accumulating wealth and position. Establishing this as truth has kept whites prosperous and in power. And it’s kept whites as a race from listening and facing the fact that our systems exclude and exploit Black people at every turn. And from acknowledging that we don’t do a damn thing about it. We as whites have been taught (overtly or indirectly) to distrust Black people, always with a veiled suggestion that they are out to get us (through violence) or get our stuff (through crime), all to justify keeping Black people at a distance from us and from opportunity. That’s why there was so much silence and complicity when the current administration began abolishing equity efforts and protections. (Not because anybody believes white people have been harmed by civil rights.) These lies have brought us to where we are right now: in the middle of a severe white backlash.
Nina Simone set Langston Hughes’ Backlash poem to music in 1966. They both knew this day would come. Their song ends with a call to action:
…But the world is big,
Big and bright and round,
And it's full of folks like me,
Who are black, yellow, beige and brown.
Mr. Backlash, I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues
History tells us things will change and there will be progress for Black people again. White supremacy will retreat into the slimy dark corners again. There will be backlash to this backlash. This is not rosy, false optimism. This is the way the pattern works.
As was sung with so much passion and hope on this beautiful Juneteenth morning at The Bishop’s Table: “We shall overcome.”
What part will you play?
Hear Nina Simone perform “Backlash Blues” here:
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