YSWNPY-Zine 20, final - Flipbook - Page 11
S
o starting with that as the presupposition, I feel
Black civic engagement is right where it should be.
It’s hard to summarize our civil engagement because as
[Nichelle Stephens] reminds us on Twitter daily, “Black
people are not a monolith. We are diverse, expressive
and resist simple categorization.” That being said, if I
had to speak generally, I’d say Black folx been engaged
civically from jump in this country. We don’t really have
another choice in a system that actively works against our
humanity.
How that civic engagement looks in practice from person
to person can vary. As [Tricia Hersey of The Nap
Ministry] says, “rest is resistance.” I feel like self care in
the form of professional therapy, prioritizing rest in a
system that wants them to continue to grind, voting in
local and federal elections, encouraging voter turnout
in our current system and protests that bring attention
to systemic issues that keep going unheard are all valid
forms of Black civic engagement.
feel that lack of political education and historical context
has Black voters underestimating their political power
and also their role in the U.S. political and economic
system. I do believe that because of the dire political
straits regarding both police violence and white supremacy in the Presidency and Federal government many
people who were once disengaged are paying attention to
political news.
Anthony Boynton, Writer & Teacher:
If by Black civic engagement you mean the ways Black
folks negotiate and address public concerns, especially
related to police brutality, then this year has just
highlighted what has been happening over the last six
years in the Black Lives Matter Movement, and
throughout the last 400 years of Black freedom
struggle. This civic engagement is, of course,
compounded by the mismanagement of and the grief
caused by the novel coronavirus by the Trump
administration and the election cycle, among other
challenges.
a lot of discourse about Black civic engagement, whether
it’s pointless or not. I think that depends if your goals are
individualistic or collectivist. If individualistic, you may
see some positive benefit towards voting. If your ideals
are what’s best for the Black collective, then the answer
becomes more complicated.
Best case scenario, the conditions for Black Americans
improve but that would come at the expense of Black
and brown people abroad. Every U.S. President has
targeted and will continue to target minority countries
with destabilizing occupational forces and embargoes in
hope for capital gain. Even Obama expanded AFRICOM,
the U.S. occupational force in Africa, to remove Gaddafi
and destabilizing Libya into its current state of modern
day African Slave trade. If you’re collectively trying to
improve the conditions of Black and brown people, civic
engagement with a country whose goal is to exploit us
makes no sense if the inhabitants of the country don’t see
the entirety of the American experiment as a problem.
Worst case scenario, which has been our reality for
the past 400+ years of our civic engagement, we have
to compromise with our oppression. From our forced
immigration, Black Americans held the ability to vote
and practiced it. The 3/5ths Clause came out afterwards
to impair the votes of enslaved Americans. Then when
slavery was abolished, a year later they made slavery legal
through the penal system (Prison). They introduced
polling taxes and literacy tests during the Jim Crow
era to reintroduce voter suppression. The Civil Rights
Act passed and we still haverampant voter suppression
through gerrymandering districts and the right to vote
stripped from prisoners while they still count towards
the population of states hosting prisons. It’s clear that any
reform towards the system will succeed in reinventing
how the system does the same thing.
So I can only feel positive about civic engagement in any
form if the goal is not reforming this system, but instead
abolishing it for something else.
WHAT ARE SOME DISCONNECTS THAT WE
CURRENTLY FACE WHEN IT COMES TO BLACK CIVIC
ENGAGEMENT?
Rodney:
The main disconnects I see are: 1) Expecting an unjust
system to work in our favor just because there are a few
outliers that make justice and the ability to thrive seem
attainable for most. 2) Not enough grace for those who
show up in the various ways they’re able.
Kadi:
I know what is played out within Democratic party
circles. I know that money isn’t being given to the most
effective BLACK organizers and that Black people with
money need to focus on integrating their political
financial investments into their own community.
I think that too many Black people think of government
in the abstract and that it doesn’t affect their daily lives.
I believe many people have no faith in their ability to
change the system. I also think that there is a huge class
divide of wealthy/educated Black people who believe too
much in the system and the majority who are completely
politically disengaged. We need a middle ground that is
community-action focused and based in the organizing that helped us during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights
Movement. We need to study Black political successes in
America and the policies that got us here
With Rodney, Kadi, Saige,
LeAron, and Anthony
Photo By: Clay Banks on Unsplash
Anthony:
A particular downfall of Black civic
engagement politics is the way Black women and queer
folks are often erased and left out of our larger
collective conversations surrounding justice. With the
exception of Breonna Taylor, a lot of the discourse surrounding anti-Black police brutality has centered on cishet Black men. This
erasure
indicative
of the concerns
Photo
by: Clayis
Banks
on Unsplash
Kimberle Crenshaw addresses in a recent TED Talk about
intersectionality.
Saige:
I think there’s two large disconnects:
1) We live in a republic, not a democracy. It’s a
democratic republic which means our individual votes
choose how we’re represented, but our individual votes
do not weigh more than our represented votes. As Black
people, who not only make up an estimated 13% of the
population but also live densely close together, that does
not work in our favor. Then when you combine
gerrymandering districts, we see how Republicans have
used this republic system to reduce the amount of
representatives their opposition gets. The republic
system has long since been rigged to empower the civic
engagement of white people.
2) Black people vote. Consistently. And consistently,
we see no benefit from it. Especially during the Obama
administration, where Flint, Michigan had its water crisis
and Obama pretended to drink their unclean water and
told them it was safe. The same admin that sent the
national guard to Baltimore and Ferguson. Sent feds
to Standing Rock to ensure a pipeline was built across
Native land. And if the excuse is, he couldn’t do anything
even though he had complete control in his second term,
or that no one expected him to fix Black people’s
problems because he works for all of America, then there
is a large disconnect in telling Black people to vote to fix
their problems.
LeAaron:
Politics is a disconnect I see in many social circles. Many
people aren’t sure how the political system we have can
be used to address the Black community’s concerns. This
uncertainty leads many to disengage from civics. And
quite a few Black people believe the system is inadequate
to address the community’s concerns. But what is
constant, is a consistent, coordinated attack on the
political power of Black people—this should more than
prove the role and potential of Black political power.
WHAT WILL BLACK CIVIC
ENGAGEMENT LOOK LIKE A
DECADE FROM NOW?
WHAT WILL HAVE CHANGED?
Rodney:
Honestly, thinking 10 years out seems like a futuristic
sci-fi dream right now when I look at our current
reality. I dream of whole ass new systems better than the
old unjust ones.
Kadi:
I would say from my perspective 1) Millennials and later
generations are not about in-person engagement, give us
something we can do at home and then let it
culminate in an in-person celebration or event.
2) Recruiting citizens should happen in places where
folks are wasting time...theme parks, malls, movie
theaters that should be year round civic recruitment and
education, engaging the youngest citizen is the best, to
plan around kids to get parents. We as Black people need
to see community wellness and politics as a united focus
so that we can realize tangible benefits from our votes
and have direction for our politicians. We should also
make a huge effort to link with power structures in other
communities, like Asian, Indigenous and Latinx leaders.
Anthony:
Activists and organizers have always used the technology
available and accessible to them and their communities
to engage social justice issues. Civic engagement has
taken place across social media platforms like Twitter, Tik
Tok, and Instagram. I believe this will continue in some
extraordinary ways in the future.
Saige:
I think we’re in a period of re-education. During the Civil
Rights era, our most prominent leaders were all anti
capitalism. Some Black folks sold out to the system
thinking they could fix it from within. Then integration
happened and the conditions of Black people actually
became worse than during the Civil Rights era. We are
recovering from that damage and hopefully learning
from the mistakes our ancestors made. In 10 years, I
hope the re-education of Americans of all races will
reach a place where we recognize capitalism as the cause
of our harm and we will no longer be held at gunpoint to
choose oppression or a compromise of our oppression.
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YOUR SILENCE WILL NOT PROTECT YOU 10
Kadi McLean, J.D. and Black History Enthusiast: I
Q&A
Saige Leslie, Organizer with AbolitionPark: There’s
