Many Black folk are concerned about a “path forward” after the 2024 election. But we’ve collectively been here before, many times, over the course of hundreds of years. I have “been here”, as have many of you. I’m sharing some recollections to remind you of what is possible. I share a parable in collective with Dr. Gayatri Sethi1 . A parable for now and today – the parable of the three Atlanta University Center (AUC) students. May it inspire fire – or deeper rest – as your circumstances merit.
When the election of 1980 took place, I was in my first year at Morehouse College. After the election there was a collective dread that many of the “gains” of the “Civil Rights Era”2 would be lost. Looking back, we can clearly discern different responses. Here is a parable of how three students responded to that election. I’m sure you can find paths.
The first student is me. I was an engineering major at Morehouse at the time. The election left me dejected and enraged. Through the mid 1980s I tried to channel this rage in all ways “respectable”3 I joined the occasional protest against South African apartheid. I considered going to DC when folk were protesting – “respectably”, nonviolently – to get a law passed to honor Martin Luther King’s birthday. I joined what was called the Institute for Third World Policy that another friend at Morehouse started. Mostly, I kept to moderate liberal Black politics, read Walter Rodney, continued on in academia, and then rebranded myself as a Black Tech Worker. I think this is the path that most folk in Black Bourgeoisie land – the folk from HBCUs and other places – took to maintain those “good jobs”.
I recall another conversation in my dorm. On the night following the 1980 election, in one of those late night dorm room discussions, I said, “Well, we’ve been here before”. One of my dorm mates responded, “Hey shut up! What the hell are you talking about? This is serious!” I can recall that a few months later, the same fellow student ended up attacking a Black trans woman who lived close to Morehouse.
So these are two students, and perhaps they chose two different paths or perhaps it is just the same old path in which a vicious empire is left unchallenged. I’m hearing many Black folk today expressing “grief”4 about the outcome of the 2024 election. When I see their “call ICE on immigrants” TikTok reels (seeking revenge on those who chose not to cast votes for genocide – but do “non-citizens”5 vote?), see their Instagram bishops call for “Black women to rest”, or see those “we’re looking out for us” memes on The Facebook, I perceive the same misogynoir, patriarchal and anti-trans reactionary violence perpetrated by Student 2. The need to lash out against the (queer, trans, Palestinian, Mexican, Muslim, Spanish-speaking, undocumented, Caribbean) “other”. Maybe because whatever comfort or power derived from being Black and bougie (but not Black & poor, or Black & trans, or Black & Muslim) (or simply Black in imperial core) is being threatened?
The outcome of these two paths – the observer or the reactionary – can now fully be assessed hindsight.
We watched millions of Black, Indigenous people across Central and South “America”6 threatened, brutalized, and murdered (this is called genocide) by US lead wars7 and US backed regimes in Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina. Millions perished in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Apartheid in South Africa eventually collapsed, but not after the loss of uncounted lives and an unfathomable toll in human suffering. Freedom fighters in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe sacrificed and fought against US funded regimes – while Black folk in the US watched to the soundtrack of Public Enemy and Luther. Socialism was dismantled across Central Europe and West Asia, resulting in dire crises for peoples across Africa, West Asia, and in the Caribbean (Cuba, Granada) – as Black folk celebrated Clinton and watched the rise of the “go high” Obamas. This neoliberal period witnessed the rise of “mass incarceration”8 , the reduction of worker protections, basic social services, defunding of schools and libraries to fund police and prisons, the eventual lapse of voting rights laws (isn’t that what we fought for?), the collapse of a climate capable of sustaining human life – all whilst segments of the Black community voted for “their” Black president. Then tried to elect another Black president who chided Palestinians (“I’m talking”) for not “respectably” mourning the loss of hundreds of thousand of their kin. So here we are again. Or maybe this time is worse? Or maybe we’ve been here before?
Now let us speak of the third student. This student was at Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) during the Reagan years. Perhaps their rage and sense of justice inspired them to become more informed about what was actually happening in Nicaragua and the rest of this earth. They spent some summers in Cuba, and started organizing in collaboration with Black people in Nicaragua. They devoted their professional life to the study of — and more importantly constructing community with — folk throughout the planet. This student was not alone in their efforts. The efforts of similarly minded folk lead to the creation of organizations like Sister Song or Cooperation Jackson or Community Movement Builders. There are networks of healers, land defenders, growers, agitators that refuse to cede life to an old and dying order. There are a wealth of organizations that exist now, here, near you. These folk are collaborating and building with movements here, and in Sudan, in Palestine, in Mexico, in Brazil, in Cuba, in Haiti, in Rojava. Perhaps this world is large enough, perhaps human imagination expansive enough for us all to exist and thrive?
So that’s it. We do not have to chose to passively accept our own ending. There are seeds that have been planted, seeds that have grown. Have we been here before? and if not, who planted those seeds? The fruits of efforts launched while we slept need our attention and care. We can and must build another kind of world. Together.
- Many of the thoughts expressed here stem from reflection on the words of Dr. Sethi who can be found on Instagram at @desibookaunty ↩︎
- I have quotes around terms that are contested. For example, were there entire segments of the Black community in Atlanta that were dispossessed, relocated, stripped of political power as a result of political decisions made by Atlanta Black political elites? https://www.mauricehobson.com/legend-of-the-black-mecca ↩︎
- May Black people across the planet earth now, henceforth, and forever relinquish attachment to respectability politics – “a philosophy promulgated by black elites to “uplift the race” by correcting the “bad” traits of the black poor” https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-rise-of-respectability-politics/ along with other ideologies of Black Liberalism https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/unburdened-by-palestine-shedding-black-liberalism-for-anti-imperialism/ ↩︎
- To my knowledge, there have been no wholescale bombings of Bourgeois Black communities in Atlanta or elsewhere – for the last 577 days, there have been incessant bombings of Black people in Sudan, for the last 402 days, there have been bombings of Palestinian people in Palestine, in both cases aided and abetted by US arms and material resources. ↩︎
- The abolition of the borders of settler colonial empires might also be a liberating path forward for this planet. ↩︎
- I’m going to refer to “America” by one of its Indigenous names – Abya Yala – for the rest of this post. ↩︎
- Audre Lorde’s poem Equal Opportunity https://charlesearl.blog/2022/02/27/thinking-with-audre-lorde-and-walter-rodney/ comes to mind ↩︎
- Orisanmi Burton https://cssh.northeastern.edu/africana/methods-of-carceral-war-a-lecture-by-dr-orisanmi-burton/ and Dylan Rodriguez https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/dylan-rodriguez-part-i-abolition-is-our-obligation have termed the use of police forces and prison construction as carceral warfare. I’ll use carceral warfare from here on to refer to the practice of using policing and prisons to suppress Black communities. ↩︎
Charles write here 