In my last post, a couple of commenters lamented that I offered no “solutions” to the current political situation in the United States and so the point of this post is to address that and to contextualize strategies for survival in the context of a particular view of the situation we are in.
I was born in 1973, to one black-identified parent and one white-identified parent, in the South. Like many people of my generation, I grew up with a narrative that the horrors of slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow were things of the past—and that while as a nation we were not “perfect,” we were on our way to a more egalitarian future. I campaigned hard for every Democrat my entire adult life, going door to door to GOTV, giving money, and of course, doing my part and voting. When Obama was elected, I thought that we had achieved something truly spectacular and, in a way, we had.
But now we find ourselves and our fellow citizens and community members in the hands of someone who is trying, and will likely succeed in some ways, to return us to the America of the 1700s, when women had no rights, black people were primarily slaves, and the rights of citizenship only applied to monied, cis, heterosexual, Christian, men. Afropessimists, of which I count myself, have been saying for years now that despite economic and political gains made by people of color—most notably black people—the nation’s underlying logic never changed and that the state has operated in much the same way since its founding.
I became an Afropessimist about 10 years ago, when the current President was elected on a platform of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexism (among other things I won’t rehearse here). I realized then that the only way that was possible was that things had not really changed on a fundamental level, despite how it appeared on the surface. Students of history will know that we have been here before.
After the end of slavery and the Northern occupation of the South, many formerly enslaved people actually held seats in Congress. With the right to vote in predominately black counties of the South, the US Congress actually had elected black officials. In Mississippi, a state that is currently trying to pass a law that would transform undocumented people into lifelong prisoners, Blanche K. Bruce, who was born a slave in Virginia, became a senator. He was on the wealthiest black men in America and he and his wife Josephine lived in an integrated Washington DC neighborhood. The Civil Rights Bill of 1875 that enabled people like Bruce to become US Senators was struck down when Rutherford B. Hayes was elected and Northern troops pulled out of the South in a deal between North and South that threw black people under the bus.
This coincided with the rise of the KKK in the South, which terrorized black people into not voting with death, violence, and property damage and then the federal government followed suit and Reconstruction was over. It would be almost 100 years before black people would be allowed to vote again. (The KKK still hasn’t been declared a terrorist organization by the United States government. That should tell you everything you need to know about the underlying order of our government.)
We are again in an era where “reconstruction,” known now as the gains of the Civil Rights movement, are being eroded. If the current administration gets its way, not only will Civil Rights vanish, but black people may well no longer be citizens (see my previous post). With black people’s citizenship rights, goes the citizenship of many other groups of color since it was black resistance that led to the 14th amendment which is where the right to birthright citizenship is enshrined.
In other words, for those folks who think we could not possibly return to the America where Jim Crow and slavery were the rule, we have already done this after slavery ended; it was simply slavery by another name. Between 1865 and 1950, many black folks were sharecroppers, which some thinkers have argued was equal to (or worse) than slavery. Today, there are more black people incarcerated than there were slaves in 1850. Slavery in the United States still exists; it is just slavery by another name.
Thus, the aims of the current administration are not to create the old in a world where it no longer exists—the goal is to expand the slavery we already have, and have maintained as a nation, to capture more people. The goal is to move POC, Queer and Trans folks, and women, out of positions of power and influence, to impoverish people in “minority” groups to render us powerless, and to communicate to upcoming generations that resistance is futile.
But resistance is not futile, though it will be largely impotent if we are operating under misapprehensions about our society. And, sadly, many of us are operating under a false narrative about the country, its history, and its power structure. Afropessimism argues that the black person is and always will occupy the metaphysical position of the slave and that this cannot be undone by wealth, by legislation, or even a black president. If that seems too bleak, take a look around and ask yourself if there is evidence to the contrary.
The example of wealthy, influential, or prominent people of color does not nullify this argument. Even before slavery fell, there were influential, wealthy, and prominent people of color. I write this from the city where Frederick Douglass lived. Before slavery was abolished, he was a world renown writer, speaker, and activist. William Alexander Leidesdorff Jr was America’s first black millionaire. James Forten was the equivalent of a millionaire in the 1830s. And, there were scores of black people we would consider middle class living in free states (today’s blue states). We must not continue to buy that lie that wealth is freedom or that it in any way makes us safer from the belief which animates our enemies, which is that it is possible for one person to be “superior” to another.
What I am getting at here is that though we are invited to feel that we are living in novel times, we are not. We are living in American times and this cycle of seeming progress and backlash has been going on for quite some time. If we are committed to the notion that as a nation we have been “improving” exponentially over time, this might be depressing. But if we take a more measured and informed view of history, the fact that we have been here before and survived, should provide (I hope) a measure of calm if not comfort.
Therefore, to understand next steps we need not look to an imaginary future, but rather, to the lessons of history and to the strategies of our forebears who were freedom fighters. The same skills developed in the past by the likes of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, WEB DuBois, Eugene V. Debs, and yes, even Booker T. Washington, need to be studied and considered, improved upon where possible, and engaged for our times:
1, From my point of view as a neurodivergent black queer bi feminist ecological scholar, the ability to live in harmony with nature is critical to survival. We must stop being afraid of nature and learn how to camp, hike, forage, live outside, overcome our addiction to convenience, and learn how to grow food. If you think that’s a non sequitur, please read Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and the eco-critical scholarship around it.
2, Yes, in 2026 we have to flip the Congress. Not because that is the solution to all our problems, but because it gives us time to build other worlds. And if possible, in 2028, we must take back the White House.
3, We must lean into mutual aid and be willing to provide shelter, money, food, and safe passage when necessary to those who are most vulnerable. This is what Quakers, Abolitionists, and other freedom fighters did during and after slavery and Jim Crow. Solidarity means sharing the same risks, so if you have privilege you must be willing to deploy it for the sake of those being targeted in our POC, Queer, Trans, and women’s communities.
4, We must refuse to shut up about all of this. This is why I am writing these posts even if no one reads them. In my public life, as an academic, teacher, and scholar, I will not shut up about any of this. It is my work, not only to pay my bills, but to save my life and the lives of others.
5, We must become students of history and the facts, despite the endless attempt to rewrite history and gaslight us into believing that what is happening is not happening.
6, And finally, we must resist the urge to believe that we are separate, that we are not one people, and that what affects this group does not affect me. I, as much as anyone, was dismayed by the POC who voted for this President (or a 3rd party) for a range of complaints about the power structure, but we must resist the urge to lean into “FAFO” energy because the life you save may be your own.
I am scared and often feel paralyzed in the face of what feels to me like senseless promulgation of widespread suffering. I can’t understand how a billionaire desires to be even wealthier at the expense of most of the country and can sleep at night with children being ripped from their parents, innocent people seeking to live a decent life being handcuffed and sent to detention camps, withholding critical care from Trans people, and seeking to block the opportunities of anyone not in the small group of billionaires they presumably see as friends. I do not understand this at all and I hope I never do.
But our ancestors have been here before and here I am writing these words on a Monday morning. I am alive and you, reading these words, are alive. Perhaps a shift in our consciousness can help us survive (and, by our own definitions, thrive) these times even as the world we can imagine, but thus far have not achieved, eludes us. Thus I end these comments with a quote for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “We Were Eight Years in Power:”
”I don’t ever want to lose sight of how short my time is here. And I don’t want ever to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors, almost always fails. I don’t ever want to forget, even with whatever personal victories I achieve, even in the victories we achieve as a people or a nation, that the larger story of America and the world probably does not end well. Our story is a tragedy. I know it sounds odd, but that belief does not depress me. It focuses me. After all, I am atheist and thus do not believe anything, even a strongly held belief, is destiny. And if tragedy is to be proven wrong, if there really is hope out there, I think it can only be made manifest by remembering the cost of it being proven right. No one—not our fathers, not the police, not our gods—is coming to save us. The worst really is possible. My aim is to never be caught, as the rappers say, acting like it can’t happen. And my ambition is to write both in defiance of tragedy and in blindness of its possibility, to keep screaming into the waves—just as my ancestors did.”
