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As DEI programs are stripped away and historical narratives are rewritten, what’s really happening to Black communities? In this episode, we dive into the quiet yet deliberate erasure of Blackness in America, the myth of meritocracy, and why economic and political solidarity are more crucial than ever. Our hosts Ifeoma Ike and Kelly Burton break down the systemic forces at play and ask the critical question: If Black people have always led the movement, who will lead the next rebellion?
Ife, how are you?
I am well and proud to be Black. You are never going to take that away from me. How are you?
I’m proud to be Black, too. It’s a good day to be Black. Sometimes, it might be a hard day to be Black, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good day to be Black. We’re going through some stuff as Black people in this country. It’s looking different.
If people haven’t noticed, we’re going to keep saying Black. Why are we going to keep saying Black?
It’s because we will not be a race.
With a T at the end that Black people created.
There are ways that what we’re going through is different, but there are also ways that it is very similar to what Black people have gone through in the past. What do you see as the distinctions? What are the similarities?
At baseline, if we’re not in a position of being subservient, then the status quo tries to create a narrative that makes it easy for us to be abused and discarded and for our genius to be minimized. It’s very tough at a time when terms like meritocracy or reverse racism are used. I got tickled.
It’s because it’s nonsense.
Also, this bootstrap stuff. All the triggers for me are triggers that have been there multi-generationally. A couple of things are new. It’s not necessarily new to Black people, but it is clear to me that Whiteness, not necessarily White people, but White people as the largest beneficiaries of Whiteness never believed that one nation that was created on these three separate branches of government, for example, that there would ever be a time where those branches would be working under a mindset that could not check and balance each other. When you don’t have a Gestapo to check the Gestapo, we are in a place that, according to the democracy rules that were laid out by the settlers and the colonizers, doesn’t have a remedy. When it comes to erasing Black people, I feel like, legally, we are going to see things that we’ve never seen before.
Erasure Of Black Identity And DEI Backlash
One of the things that is most fascinating to me is that it’s so quiet on the other side, as we are seeing the rollback of all things DEI and the obliteration of divisions within the federal government and legislation that has existed for decades. This administration is trying to roll back. We’re seeing the impact that that’s having on the Black community in particular. We look back at history and all the awful atrocities that have happened in this country. You say, “How could people have allowed that to happen?”
I’m clear as to how these atrocities have happened. I just don’t know if the people that have been brought along to start questioning things like White supremacy, always a conversation within Black and indigenous communities, but not necessarily taken up by other communities as to the realness of it. I’m not surprised about the atrocities that man can do to other human beings.
I’m surprised that people aren’t seeing the erasure today as something that’s not just about Black and Indigenous people. For example, when you raise DEI, it is being used as a slur. It is being coded to say Black. Deeper than that is the N-word. There are a lot of people who subconsciously are not fighting to protect DEI and therefore are not protecting Black people because anti-Blackness has taught most people to remove and distance themselves from Black people when Black people are seen as the outsider.
We’re used to that. We’re always going to have community, but as a community, one of our innovations has always been movement, revolution, and rebellion. Fine, get rid of DEI, i.e., Black people. What you all got left? Who’s going to lead your rebellion and revolution? Who’s going to be able to get hit at, stripped, whipped, and still bounce back to build a strategy? Who has that muscle? The muscle memory of White supremacy is in more people’s blood than the muscle memory of the movement. For us, it’s nothing.
The Power Of Black Solidarity
It’s so fascinating that you say that because coming out of the election, I realized that the solidarity that we take for granted in the Black community fundamentally does not exist in other communities of color. Intellectually, I could have maybe come to a similar conclusion, but seeing it was shocking to me. Also, reaffirming to say, “We’ve got capital that we don’t even appreciate.” This is an opportunity for us to figure out how we aggregate it and how we spend it down.
In the space of, for example, solidarity, solidarity is looking tricky for us in a capitalist society. Not everybody is an entrepreneur. When entrepreneurs are struggling in a society where, for example, the things they build and create are starting to get more mass appeal. As those same spaces are saying, “We don’t want your products and what you sell,” it’s hard for those individuals to share with our community at large why they need support to be in these spaces without there being some both constructive, but at times also attacking criticisms around, “Maybe you shouldn’t have been in that White space to begin with.”
It is a tricky place. It’s where our solidarity can sometimes be a gift and a curse. We, too, at times, need support and direction. I do think that in a space where social media, but on a broader level, misinformation and disinformation allows for everyone to be an expert, it then becomes hard as to who is the leadership that’s going to help us try a strategy.
Sometimes, the hardest thing is like, “Can we get behind a strategy?” It may be the wrong strategy, but because Black people have never been able to be wrong, sometimes we would rather debate than try a strategy. Separately, there’s also us and them that happen within the community. If you’re not an entrepreneur or you haven’t had a product that has reached mass scale, you may look at it like, “You’ve already been sold out or making money. The rest of us is not making that type of money. I can’t get behind you.”
Solidarity within our community needs to be defined. We need to figure out what practices of solidarity we’re going to exercise, even if the community that we’re supporting within the house is doing something different than we’re used to doing or that we do ourselves. That’s the part that’s going to be tricky. How well can we organize and how quickly?
Reimagining Solidarity Beyond Politics
That’s going to be the hard part because I don’t think we have the infrastructure necessary to organize in the digital age. What’s interesting is when we think about solidarity in the African-American community or the Black community, it’s often partisan. We think about political solidarity as partisanship. I don’t necessarily know the new lanes of community solidarity. What does economic solidarity look like? It’s quite possible you have folks from across parties who believe in a similar economic future for Black folks and maybe even similar tactics. I don’t even know what that looks like.
Organizing Through Community Networks
From an organizing perspective, the best strategies are the ones that you prepare before there’s a fire. I do think that what we do know is that if we start thinking, “I may be good today, but tomorrow I may not be good. Who was the community? Who were the 3 to 5 people that I can have real conversations with about the status of how I’m doing personally, financially, and economically? What does organizing within that network look like at any given time?” How do we create, whether it’s a spreadsheet, a text thread, a group me, or a way to keep communication fluid in good times and bad times, so that we can do efforts that we are strong at mutual aid SOSs?
Remember when it used to snow and you just had the snow phone line, whatever it is, getting back to the analog ways of communicating. I mean it by analog. To your point, we think that liking a post or sending a DM is organizing. We don’t own these tools. We’re going to have to find ways to communicate and organize behind the scenes.
I do think that Black people are good at that, but there was something you said to me earlier. You even said it again here. I don’t know if we value those things as gems. Other communities don’t necessarily do that inherently. We do it and then dismiss it as a strategy because we’re so used to doing it. We’ve never been rewarded for that type of organizing, so we sometimes miss that that’s going to be part of what sustains us moving forward.
There’s a lot of fear and trepidation in this moment. I know that you receive a lot of that because you’re such a thought leader in this space. You probably get a whole lot of SOSs. How do you think people manage the fear in this moment, as a lot of us stand down potential erasure across a number of different domains and a lot of different sectors? It looks different, but at the end of the day, Blackness is under attack. How do we deal with and meet the moment?
I do believe that there’s this mantra of like, “But in the end, we win.” My starting point is not what I see right in front of me, but knowing that in the end, we win. That’s one. Number two, I also believe that I may not necessarily see the end. I’m resting on what my responsibility is and also doing just enough. Black people have never been afforded the right to fail. Oftentimes, we are trying to fix everything, not necessarily because we want to fix the “White man’s problem” but because we’re tired of seeing our people suffer.
I do think that when Blackness is being erased, our books are being banned, our children are being told that they don’t deserve protection, and the many different intersectionalities, Black disabled people, Black queer people, there are so many parts about who we are that are being attacked that you have to figure out what then can you do and do well.
The last thing I’ll say is that focusing on one thing feels way more manageable than focusing on all things. You’ve said this in other episodes. Being quiet and being still, and I hate to say it, is a luxury and privilege. Most Black people don’t live in situations where they can be quiet and still. I feel like when you have a moment to be like, “Things are too busy. I need a quiet moment,” and you take that moment, it’s almost like taking something back from the enemy.
The enemy never intended for you to rest. You have to be in chaos. It’s a miracle that we’ve been able to thrive in chaos. It’s not about having the keys to fix everything that’s on fire. It’s about coming out on the other side of the fire. That’s what it feels like in the immediate. I want people to be here on the other side of the fire. It’s become more insular in strategies. Do you have thoughts on that?
Sacrificing For Collective Progress
I do, but they’re jumbled. This is what I’ll say. In this moment, there’s a lot of us saying, “You all figure it out. I’m going to chill, relax, exhale, and self-care.” The question that we have to ask ourselves is, in the midst of that, what do you plan to sacrifice for our people? Not for democracy. Democracy is going to figure that out or not. When we think about past generations of Black people, we always go back to the sacrifices. If it’s our goal to be good ancestors, as Black people, what are we going to sacrifice to ensure that that happens?
Sometimes, “I’m going to do me” gets lost in terms of how you are going to show up for your people. I talk about them, and I don’t have the answer for that. We all need to personally reckon with how we plan to sacrifice to ensure we are being good ancestors in the ways that our people have been good ancestors to us. It’s the same fight. We can’t opt out and go live the soft life. We have to figure out what our part is to do. I’m hoping that on the other side of this, we give ourselves some space to do that. We have so many thoughts, but we’re going to keep moving.
Thank you all. We hope you are taking care out there. We know that the world is wild. Every day is a new barrage of information that seems to be coming for us, but we ain’t new to it. We’re true to it, you all. We are going to keep showing up episode after episode. Thank you all for tuning in. Be sure to follow us on all of the things. Be sure to subscribe, like, share, and engage with us in the comments. We want to know how you are coping and moving through this movement and moment. Thank you all. See you next time. Bye.
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