February 16, 2023
Tuesday, on the fifth anniversary of the Parkland mass shooting, we awakened to another blood soaked Valentine’s Day. Monday night, with an active shooter loose on their campus, Michigan State students were told that their only options were to “Run. Hide. Fight,” underscoring just how badly we failed them. Again and again, in places where they should be learning, laughing, studying and flirting, they are barricading doors and hiding in closets. When they finally received word from adults messaging from a safe distance that the crisis was over, they told us that they don’t know what to feel.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that this country is addicted to hatred and violence. We repeatedly watch our children slaughtered with weapons of war and do nothing to stop the carnage. There are those in our midst so dedicated to cultivating cruelty and so determined to keep Black people at the bottom of our societal hierarchy that they ban books about baseball greats Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente. In the Florida statehouse, DeSantis plots to ride a wave of anti-Blackness and homophobia to the White House and The New York Times helpfully describes his attacks as “building his brand.”
Meanwhile, we mistake the presence of two Black quarterbacks in the Super Bowl for “progress”, glossing over the fact that the game itself is the spectacle where the brains and bodies of predominantly Black men are pummeled for our entertainment. We conveniently forget that there are only four Black head coaches in a sport where 70% of the players are men of color (Source: “Where are all the Black NFL coaches?” by James Brown, USAToday.com, 2/5/23).
The chickens have finally come home to roost. A country built on the myth of white superiority is on a foundation of ashes that is crumbling beneath us. Behind the book bans and the hard right turn to fascism are a group of people terrified that they might be exposed. They know that every story of Black achievement, no matter how anodyne, features the irrational antipathy and capricious violence of white people as a backdrop.
Their fragile egos cannot bear for people to learn the truth—that Black people resisted enslavement and Jim Crow and achieved over and over again, in spite of unspeakable odds placed against us. We achieved not simply in sports and culture, but in medicine, engineering, and most foundationally, democracy.
As The 1619 Project demonstrates persuasively, more than any other group of citizens, it is Black people who forced this country to begin to live up to its ideals for all people. Fascists know that their power is dependent on keeping people ignorant and hateful. They can’t risk having white children develop empathy and Black children develop pride. Let’s be clear about the endgame. American fascists know that if you feed people poison and arm them with guns, they will destroy themselves.
#BlackhistoryisAmericanhistory
#Thetruthwillsetyoufree
#Guncontrolnow