Examining The Current State Of Black Lives And Envisioning Where We Go From Here

Black Future Month: Examining The Current State Of Black Lives And Envisioning Where We Go From Here
Posted: 02/01/2015 10:00 am EST Updated: 04/03/2015 5:59 am EDT

As a community organizer who holds a degree in History, I understand the fascination with history. However, there is a tendency for many of us to get engrossed in the recounting of our history, which often amounts to purely intellectual activity without material action. In a day and age where every 28 hours a Black person is being killed with impunity, unemployment in Black communities is 12% and Blacks make up 40% of the imprisoned population, we can’t afford to solely commemorate the past. We must seize the opportunity to change the course of history by shaping our future.

Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed Black people. However, we know that has been far from the case. There’s been persistent and concerted effort to erode the gains of the Black liberation struggles throughout the years, hindering Black progress. These attacks seem subtle and rational to non-Black communities, as matters of simple policy or social norms. However, they are significant and together constitute structural attacks.
Examples included the divestment from the public sector, to attack on labor unions, and laws that criminalize non-violent activity, which leads to obscene rates mass of incarceration.

Anti-Black racism operates at a society wide level and colludes in a seamless web of policies, practices and beliefs to oppress and disempower Black communities. Far from ending, systemic racism reinvents itself to conform to what is publically acceptable. Leaving the quality of Black life diminished and more permanently fixed with each passing decade. And any outcry or attempt to expose this cycle of oppression is often ignored or dismissed by broader US society, because it seems rational or insignificant.

At the same time there are full frontal attacks, and even if when caught on camera, there’s evidence of impunity, as in the murders of Mike Brown or Eric Garner. Sadly, as ColorOfChange has aptly pointed out, the state allows law enforcement to kill Black people at nearly the same rate as Jim Crow lynchings. In light of these egregious cases, and many others, the #Blacklivesmatter movement has been catalyzed across the nation and it is clear that this movement is not solely about extrajudicial killings. Our communities are concerned with their entire quality of life. We are concerned with the systemic attacks on our humanity at a societal level. The violence that says this society is colorblind and so we should remain silent.

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