When I was 10 years old, a Black Man became president of the United States of America– my community was united, walking as one, we did not see the cliff until the fall began. During that time there was great elation, but in reality we had no idea that we were witnessing the final installation of a wall around our political imaginations. Since then many of my generation have come to realize that the rest of the world could not tell the difference between our joy in 2008 and our horror in 2016. The bombs fell all the same. We did not have the language to accurately describe what was happening to them nor did we understand what’d happened to us. Somehow, our understanding of the injustices we face here exists in deliberate blindness to their relationship with the injustices that the US commits around the world. And to make things worse, the political party that had delivered to us that joy of 2008, only served capital and imperial ambition with a smile. Who took our tongue?
The Democratic establishment had never had a victory quite like the Obama Era. With the election of Barack Obama the Democrats had delivered a white whale to its most important voting block. Having a figure like Obama who was endlessly charismatic meant that the messaging to that voting block became not just easy but instant. At a certain point he even used Anti-Black dog-whistles calling Black Lives Matter protesters in Baltimore “Thugs”, but it simply did not matter. The Democrats had caught lightning in a bottle and were using it to strike down all political thought to their left. Whether it was Dr. Cornell West or rapper Lupe Fiasco, descent was not tolerated. The aim was to have Black voices speak as ahistorically as possible. Phrases that could have only been built inside a CIA color revolution generator like “I’m not my ancestors” became popular and slowly one thing became clear. Democrats didn’t want to just claim space in the Black political imagination, they aspired to BE the Black political imagination. This in practice, went far past tokenization; it was an attempt to finalize colonization, it is a bushel of thorns disguised as an olive branch, it is an attempt to conquer the collective Black memory. The goal was to mold Blackness into a system friendly and compliant identity without ever addressing the structural hurdles and systemic oppression we have faced in this country since its origin and it was working.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, charisma is not designed in a lab so the failed Obama clones like Hakim Jefferies, Cory Booker, and Pete Buttigieg (for some reason) could not capture even a modicum of the excitement of the original. This is because for all of their talk about representation and understanding Blackness, Democrats at the end of the day are trying to operate in the best interest of capital. And what is certainly not good for capital is for Black politicians to be able to speak in the best interest of Black people, instead they use black politicians to further policies that will do nothing but harm our communities. As the Obama era came to an end and the rise of Donald Trump began it became clear that a pivot in strategy was needed.
In the US, two concepts are typically uniparty, the first being imperialism and the second being anti-blackness and luckily for both political parties these two often go hand-in-hand. Knowing this, Democrats forged a plan to fabricate a new Black political mindset. Finding themselves in a new political reality in the Trump Era, Democrats have largely enjoyed their role as (controlled) opposition party. The Dems have been able to traffic in rhetoric that resembles solidarity at first glance while moving ever more to the right and pretending that their base of Black voters was always reactionary. There is a reason that democrats pretend like there will be a great shift of Black men toward the Republican Party every election cycle. It reinforces the notion that reactionary politics are just inherent to Blackness and not a function of the limited nature of the two-party system.
Both Republicans and Democrats share the same tactics, framing Black people as a particularly socially conservative voting block, erasing the history of the Black radical tradition. In this country, the closest to any Maoist formation was the Black Panthers. Many Black fingers from the past that have had their legacy liberalized over the past couple of decades were themselves radical in their politics. Where we see this tactic deployed the most is in the Democratic Party’s attempt to own the collective voice of Black women. Black women in this country, and all around the world, have worked entirely too hard to maintain the Black radical tradition. To allow Democrats to leech off of that work to maintain a dying empire that is using its death rattles to attempt to take the entire world with it to hell would be a disgrace.
The thought seems to be that the Black radical tradition has already been neutralized, so it can be distorted in a way that fits the Dems current needs. Take Jasmine Crockett, for example, charismatic and witty as she can be, the Democratic Party still sees her as a shield for their worst policies, including support for genocide and abandonment of all environmental protections. Despite the fact that she lost, the way her campaign was run indicates that they know they can use Blackness ( specifically Black femininity) as a barrier between them and criticism. This faux Black political thought means that the Democratic Party has the power to shape our history in any way they see fit and regurgitate it back to us.
The deflection from this point is that Black people are not a monolith, so the Democratic Party having a “diverse” array of political opinions from Black politicians makes sense, right? And this could be argued if the Democratic Party showed any interest at all in defending Black party members who spoke out against US imperialism. In the case of Cori Bush, AIPAC spent 7 million dollars against her and racistly doctored pictures of her on behalf of her opponent Wesely Bell, a Black man who had no qualms about supporting Israel and its genocide of the Palestinans. This is faux Black Political thought in action; it covers its tracks as it moves so that we never knew it was there.
Democrats seem to think that the best way forward is to simply pretend that our past did not happen the way we know it did. They think that enough legwork has been done on their part to where they can act like the only political contribution Black people (in particular Black women) have ever made is to vote for the Dems, and that will be all it takes to ease our struggle. The sad truth is found in the Malcolm X quote, “The most disrespected person in America is the Black Woman.” Democrats and Republicans understand that it is easy for Democrats to put some of their worst policies on the backs of Black Women and allow them to bear the brunt of our displeasure with those policies. Whether it be Democrats having Kamala Harris wax poetic about the lethality of America’s military at the DNC or Republicans propping up Candace Owens as a representative of Black consciousness, it serves the same colonial purpose.
As bombs from the US fall on school girls in Iran, I can’t help but think of those who used the future of little girls just like them to justify a war in the first place. This is the reality for all people outside of the imperial core, and for those of us who are Black living within it, it would behoove us to find our bearings and stand in solidarity with the global south.
For those experiencing the death grip of colonization, the first thing stolen is our words, but the ultimate goal is our memory. The dream scenario for the political elite in this country is for us as Black Americans (and colonized people across the world) to lose our ability to articulate our past accurately. To say it this way, both Republicans and Democrats would prefer for us to be a corpse with many scars rather than a witness with many wounds. To believe in the power of the” American Spirit” and sing the praises of the oppressor, this would be the death of our revolutionary lineage. To many in my generation, this idea of American exceptionalism is not just laughable. It’s insulting.
If you would like to say that America is exceptionally good at murdering children or creating terror around the world, then sure, we could talk about that exceptionalism. But as far as providing any type of stability or a sense of moral justice? I cannot say that it’s something I have seen in my time in this country, and the fact that Democrats still have the gall to claim any allegiance to Blackness after all this tells you all you need to know about the candidates they put forward.
In reality, what we have witnessed in this country regarding Black political thought is one of the greatest cappers ever recorded. The theft of the Black political imagination, the political elite have mangled it and returned it to us diluted and full of redacted sections. However, no matter how hard they try, colonizers can never explain away the contradictions of their worldview. Our political education lies in our memory; it is ours to reclaim and protect.
