Why do we as Black folks have to double and triple our efforts to register non-voters and get them to the polls to vote for Democrats, and somehow get more white folks to step up with us? A rant.
A little history: White people shown celebrating lynchings in photographs and on postcards may be dead, however, their kids and grandkids are still here and still hate obsessed.
Those of you naïve, younger-than-me folks who turn your noses up at voting (looking at you, Kaepernick) better wake up and smell the stank of the roasting flesh of our very recent ancestors, lest it soon become yours. Don’t tell me “it can’t happen here” ‘cause it already has.
EJI researchers documented 4,075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950.
In 2017, EJI supplemented this research by documenting racial terror lynchings in other states and found these acts of violence were most common in eight states: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.
Who the hell do you think Republicans and their storm troopers are? If you think they have kind thoughts for the future of Black folk, and Native Americans, Asians or white-adjacent Latinos, and LGBTQs, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn
Party on and buy the music of vapid and conscienceless multimillionaire rappers who hugged up to Donald Trump, or follow the fake dictums of purported allies who will not be the first to suffer the onslaught, or die.
I’ll keep y’all in my thoughts and prayers ’cause at 75 this year, I won’t be around a whole lot longer. You will reap what you sow — or don’t sow.
Sadly, your grasp of history is limited since most of it doesn’t get taught in school other than a nod to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., around Black History Month. And the Republiklansters are now pushing to erase even that with bogus CRT lies.
When The New York Times wrote about lynching awhile back, they managed to do a whole feature without mentioning once it was white people who were responsible. Wow. Imagine that.
Wake the fu*k up. Voting is our last line of defense. You really don’t want to live through the burning down of our own ‘hoods in rage, I’ve been there, done that, and it was ugly — for us. Not telling you not to march, not to organize, just do that organizing with a purpose.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Get as many votes as we can and keep trying to get more white folks to stand with us. Pay attention to your local and state elections. Do you even know the names of your state elected officials?
Get involved. Have you ever been to a local Democratic Party meeting? Do you even know where they are or who goes? You got a beef? Well, put your body where your gripes are and show the fu*k up. Learn some basic civics. Stop demanding “The President” do shit he can’t.
Y’all deal with a celebrity view of politics and don’t bother to get into the mechanics of it all. Y’all are demanding microwave instant solutions to a process that is long, tedious and very not glamorous. The only red carpet you are gonna be on in the future is one soaked in blood if you don’t get up off your asses and put the work in.
I have more to say but am ending this rant for now. All power to the people who are doing the hard work of trying to save us all.
Originally a Twitter thread.
