Hey! Did you hear one thing? No? Simply useless silence?
That’s unusual, as a result of proper about this time final yr, and all of the months main as much as the November 2024 Presidential Election, quite a lot of folks had a complete lot to say.
In reality, they wouldn’t shut the hell up.
Even earlier than July 21, 2024, when then-President Joe Biden formally dropped out of the race and threw his help behind then-Vice President Kamala Harris, there was a loud and proud contingent of Blackfolk who used each GOP/Russian bot-fed argument to persuade different brothers and sisters that voting was a waste of time.
Voting assaults
They got here at it from a number of angles:
Each essential events are precisely the identical,
Voting has by no means delivered something to our communities
Whoever wins the presidency received’t matter
We must always cease voting on the lesser of two evils
If you happen to do vote, solely concentrate on native elections as a result of these federal places of work don’t actually have an effect on our day-to-day.
Wow. Strive telling any of that nonsense right now to the tons of of 1000’s of Black and Brown folks who misplaced jobs, scholarships, analysis funding, housing, Job Corps packages and extra. Although one social gathering (the Republicans) promised this end result, by killing something they deemed smelled of DEI (Range, Fairness and Inclusion), and the opposite social gathering (the Dems) pledged to combat for all the variety, fairness and inclusion attainable.
Strive arguing that the federal workplace of the President hasn’t impacted the day-to-day of elected officers who’ve been arrested for combating for the rights of poor folks and other people of colour. Or the 1000’s of people being deported, despite the fact that the Mission 2025 authors stated they had been solely going to go after the “dangerous” immigrants.
We had been warned
If solely somebody had warned Black America that Election 2024 was a alternative between preserving and doubtlessly increasing the little piece of democracy America has left, and the transfer to make this land a white nationalist dictatorship. Oh, wait. Solely a gazillion folks sounded this alarm. Repeatedly. Together with the “eleven-teen million” articles and op-eds written by the Defender.
And with all their “voting-doesn’t-matter” chatter, social media posts, podcast rants and conferences with the Mission 2025 “messiah” to see what he needed to provide Blackfolk, we ain’t heard a dayum factor from them clowns since. However we did really feel their influence, as they satisfied tons of of 1000’s of us to sit down out that election.
Kamala’s Blackness
However wait, the silence of the lames doesn’t simply embody that group. Lord have mercy, when VP Harris turned the official presidential candidate of the Democratic Celebration, a military of “skinfolk” preached she wasn’t actually Black, or at the least not Black sufficient. Our individuals had been sounding extra like Donald than Donald.
And in style radio hosts, together with Charlamagne the gawd-dayum, went all-in on misinformation, dumbing down the citizens into believing Harris was about to lock brothers up from “sea to shining sea.”
They pointed to Harris’s file because the California Lawyer Common. However these false income didn’t learn the nice print. Hell, they ignored the massive, daring print, which revealed Harris to be simply the other—a reformist DA who created packages to present folks second and third possibilities fairly than lock’em up and throw away the important thing.
Has anybody heard from this posse? Anybody?
Then, some portion of the Knee-Develop contingent spewed the nonsense that Jamaicans weren’t Black.
Since when? They had been with Bob Marley, Patrick Ewing, Lester Holt, Harry Belafonte, Al Roker, Uncle Luke, Naomi Campbell, Bushwick Invoice, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Marcus Garvey, and many others., all of whom we have fun for his or her Black excellence… with their Jamaican ancestry-havin’ behinds.
However when Kamala ran for the best workplace within the land, a few of our individuals declared Jamaicans weren’t Black. In all probability the identical folks arguing right now that Harriet Tubman by no means actually existed.
Even church-mouse-quiet Janet Jackson screamed that asinine nonsense. It was one factor for The Donald to speak that noise, however Janet Privateness Management? Mayne! And it eroded help for an election consequence that will have produced a a lot completely different 2025 actuality than what we’re experiencing now.
Then, there was the herd of celebs and pseudo-celebs who brazenly selected to experience the jock of somebody who has been sticking it to Black individuals for many years. And, after all, there are these Blacks for Trump who voted out of their affinity for white proximity.
White rage
However what’s loopy to me is, even whitefolk who had been Trump ride-or-dies, have been bum-rushing GOP city halls nationwide, as a result of they’re pissed, and are demanding that their elected officers stand as much as the individual they themselves voted into workplace.
For months now, these nearly lily-white gatherings have proven Trump-voting Republicans cursing out and booing their congresspersons and senators for permitting Trump and Musk to implement every little thing Trump and Musk promised to implement.
These pissed Republicans had been cool with the concept Trump’s insurance policies would kick Black individuals within the collective nuts. However once they realized their very own individuals had been the most important DEI recipients, and that Trump actually was going to finish Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP and Headstart, packages utilized by extra whites than some other demographic, they misplaced their collective minds.
A lot in order that lots of them had been a part of the 12.1 million folks who participated within the 2,000-plus “No Kings” nationwide protests on June 14. Even they’re shedding their minds at the concept Trump has upped the militarization of the police and the “police-ization” of the navy. Even they’re outdone by the truth that it’s not simply the “prison illegals” that this administration is deporting, however the staff who choose their fruit, manicure their lawns, construct their properties and nanny their children.
Deafening silence
However whereas Trump’s voters are voicing their disgust, the place are the Blackfolk who advised us voting didn’t matter, or that Kamala wasn’t Black sufficient, or that each one events are the identical, or that Trump is the “messiah” we’d like?
For all their massive discuss, loud pronouncements, and pre-2024 election megaphone bluster, these MFs (misinformed folks) ain’t uttered a dayum phrase since.
To name them lame is an understatement. To label them complicit within the insanity we’re all dealing with is extra on level, however nonetheless doesn’t do justice to the injury they helped facilitate.
However, for them to be silent on this second… I don’t even have phrases for that. Or, at the least, not phrases I can get away with publishing right here. Nonetheless, their silence says quite a bit.
