Elections have penalties. It’s nearly a cliché at this level, one thing stated both earlier than an election to rally the troops to the polls or after shedding an election. It’s an introspection level, the place in evaluating and contrasting political insurance policies, the stark actuality between the actions of the victor and the guarantees of the defeated candidate is made clear, not simply to the losers, however oftentimes to the winners, too.
That’s what we’re seeing in Washington, D.C., notably within the Southeast part. Black people are being harassed for every thing from smoking weed on their stoop, which in D.C. is authorized, except you’re in Part 8 housing, which implies you’re below federal authority, the place you’ll be able to lose your house, to easily recording the mass presence of the Nationwide Guard, FBI, DEA, and D.C. police marching via the streets.
Black neighborhoods are below a siege, and I’ll guess even former New York Metropolis mayor Rudy Guilinani, the preferred champion of cease and frisk and damaged window policing within the nation, should be impressed.
In America, our politics lie alongside a philosophical spectrum. On the poles are communism on the left, which I can’t discover that many adherents to in 2025, and fascism on the precise, the place we are able to uncover lovers all through the present Trump administration.
However, typically, the political heart is the place most People like to seek out their politicians. Middle proper or heart left is about how a lot cash to spend, or not spend, on the priorities of the social gathering in energy.
Nevertheless, the 2024 presidential election wasn’t in regards to the heart. It was about an existential risk to Black individuals. A transparent selection between a standard political candidate in Kamala Harris for the Democratic Occasion, and a legal felon who’d been discovered accountable for sexual assault in Donald Trump for the GOP.
For rational individuals, even should you didn’t like Harris’ insurance policies, or should you didn’t know a single factor about her insurance policies, the selection for president ought to have been as simple as pondering, which certainly one of these candidates would I belief round my household? The Black girl with the cackling chuckle, or the white man with extra legal indictments than we have now fingers and toes, and whose finest buddy is a pedophile?
Yeah, powerful selection.
For almost all of Black individuals, even with slippage amongst some Black male voters, enticed by the notion of embracing misogyny, an approximation to energy, and who had been transactional of their philosophy, we noticed the risk and voted accordingly. However there was one group of loud and flawed Black people who populated social media telling Black individuals to not vote, or to vote for every thing besides the highest of the poll, as a result of of their eyes, if the Republican and Democratic events had been snakes, then it didn’t matter who was in workplace.
FBA (Foundational Black People) and ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) people.
Should you’re studying this, I’m fairly positive you’re acquainted with this crowd. Sure, I do know that they’re technically two totally different teams, below two totally different leaders, however I don’t notably care about their particulars or their leaders. Their ideology of xenophobia, fetishization of ancestry and lineage, and the distraction that they use to divide Black individuals primarily based upon whether or not or not one’s ancestry is tied to slavery, is a white supremacist dream.
It’s nearly as if the long-serving FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover rose from the useless, despatched a COINTELPRO 2.0 battle plan to a bunch of gullible Black people, after which unleashed a torrent of flag-bearing, hashtag and meme-loving, xenophobic, Black social media accounts on the Black neighborhood, after which watched the magic occur.
Why does this matter?
It issues as a result of data, notably within the Black neighborhood, is golden. Of the teams on this nation, we as Black people have all the time wanted to create our impartial types of data, whether or not it’s Black newspapers or Black Twitter, to inform our tales our approach. And there’s an inherent belief that each one the actors in spreading data are working in our greatest curiosity.
That isn’t FBA and ADOS.
Earlier than the election, these two teams did their finest to unfold as a lot misinformation about candidate Harris as potential. In a barely masked effort to embrace the speaking factors of the Trump administration, they challenged whether or not Harris was a Black girl, simply as Trump did on the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists. They denigrated her as a “cop,” ignoring the truth that the Black neighborhood wants each legal protection attorneys and legal prosecutors making selections about Black individuals within the judicial system.
And, most egregious of all, they, as a tacit voter suppression tactic, urged Black people to not vote, all as a result of they claimed not to have the ability to see the distinction between a small Democratic candidate and a white supremacist, white nationalist, fascist legal president.
Now, because the army sweeps via D.C., and there are GOP politicians overtly speaking about bringing the identical state of affairs to different Black cities and neighborhoods, these chaos brokers all of a sudden have found that when a Black neighborhood is below martial legislation, that the state doesn’t care about whether or not or not your individuals have lived on this nation for the reason that Mayflower or simply arrived from Kingston.
They’re scrambling to create social media discussions on X and different platforms, the place they’re now shocked, shocked, that the white supremacist they stated was the identical as the beautiful Black woman who simply wished to present them housing credit, defend civil rights beneficial properties, and perhaps, simply perhaps, not be loopy, is doing the loopy white supreamcist issues he stated he’d do.
They’re studying that adopting a nativist nationalist ideology of blood and soil doesn’t embrace them within the blood or the soil. All as a result of the maws of the monster don’t care should you’re as xenophobic as they’re, along with your “diaspora wars.” He’s nonetheless gonna go into the Nationwide African American Historical past Museum and strip you of your historical past. Know why? To paraphrase Malcolm X, they don’t cling you since you’re from America, Canada, Ghana, or Trinidad; they cling you since you’re Black.”
However it’s too late now for FBA/ADOS people. They will run below the banner of lineage, put one more American flag on their profiles, and suppose that their techniques of Black division are gonna someway lead to reparations for Black People. Nonetheless, most Black individuals notice at this level that they’re fools. Discredited fools.
Somebody as soon as stated that Newt Gingrich was a dumb individual’s concept of a sensible individual, and the identical will be stated of FBA and ADOS: a dumb Black individual’s concept of a sensible Black motion. However I don’t blame the dumb individuals. Everybody searches for a philosophy to information their lives, and we belief, whether or not it’s faith or social justice, that the motion’s inherent premise is to maneuver the person or the neighborhood in a optimistic, ahead method.
To fight the assault on Washington, D.C.’s Black neighborhood and the Black communities to come back, whether or not as a provocation to justify incarcerating extra Black individuals via police contact, or voter suppression throughout the midterms, with the army appearing because the intimidation power, FBA and ADOS aren’t to be trusted as a motion. As a result of they went bankrupt as a philosophy after they couldn’t see, determine, or strategize in opposition to the risk that, to an clever group like nearly all of Black voters, was proper there of their face.
Finally, the actions of Donald Trump are his duty. He’s the arsonist carrying the gasoline in Washington, D.C., and he’s liable for the hearth that he creates. However FBA/ADOS people had been decided to inform Black people dwelling in D.C. and all through the nation that the firefighter and the arsonist had been the identical. And for that time alone, you shouldn’t take heed to a single phrase they are saying once more.
As a result of elections have penalties.
Lawrence Ross is the creator of “The Divine 9: The Historical past of African American Fraternities and Sororities” and “Blackballed: The Black & White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses.” He’s additionally the founding father of TheMetaphorClub.com, a brand new social media platform that emphasizes neighborhood, selflessness, and genuine relationships. He lives in Los Angeles together with his spouse, April.
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