Where is the Political Zero Tolerance for Black Lives Not Mattering?
This week, the Black political, media and advocacy class discovered itself, again, unable to effectively establish zero tolerance for brazen displays of dismissal and disrespect against Black people
Publisher’s Riff
The unacceptable mistreatment of Black people anywhere is the unacceptable mistreatment of Black people everywhere. Period.
This statement should have reflexively come to mind and prompted a flurry of immediate outrage and counter action as images of White men on horseback whipping and herding Black Haitian migrants at the banks of an American border river in broad daylight in 2021 circulated across news and social media feeds. Tragically, it didn’t happen that way. It took days to process by both a Biden administration that needed to, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, explore “the context” and the responding Black political, media and activism collective that was still preoccupied with anti-vaxxing stumbles by Nicki Minaj and a predictably who-cares all-White Emmy winners lineup.
Before we arrived at the point of watching actual unscripted scenes of federal Border Patrol Agents living out their 19th century slaveholder fetish, there was plenty of intelligence and news reports telling us about the growing mass of Black Haitian humanity trapped on the U.S.-Mexico border. But, whenever a “crisis” flares up on the U.S.-Mexico border, which is frequent and always trivialized for political gain depending on who benefits from the anti-immigrant screeds, we typically assume it involves Brown Latino migrants. Immigration crises, issues concerning the growing global “refugee” population and the debate over immigration “reform” are never viewed as “Black issues.” Events of the past week show us that that is far from the truth, especially when considering over 10 percent of the Black population in the U.S. consists of migrants from Africa and the Caribbean - and that number steadily climbs … in fact, it has doubled since 2000, according to the Pew Research Center …
The habit of national discourse to view the issue of immigration as an exclusively Brown problem, while validating white nationalist anti-immigrant rhetoric in the process, along with the equally problematic and anti-immigrant tendency of Black America to view it the same way is part of the reason why Black Diaspora migration to the U.S. is so troubled. That’s another discussion coming soon. But, had Black and Brown interests been aligned and teamed up a while back on the issue of immigration and against white nationalist policy and messaging, it’s likely we wouldn’t have faced this current Haitian migrant crisis.
But, let’s acknowledge at the moment how powerless Black political, media and activist organization leadership is in counter punching in any bold way against the inhumane mistreatment of Black people that look like them on the U.S.-Mexico border. Statements of outrage came late. There are no firings; those Border Patrol agents were simply reassigned to “administrative duties” and the horse unit disbanded. No one wants to talk about the clout of the National Border Patrol Council (the union representing Border Patrol officers). And, there’s no real clarity on what’s the difference between nearly 40,000 Afghan refugees who were rapidly rescued, processed and resettled in the United States (with stimulus payments) from nearly 8,000 miles away and the 14,000 Black Haitian refugees who face a homeland being half-flattened by a 7.2 scale earthquake last month just 700 miles off the U.S. coast. This also could have even been that moment when former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama could have spoken up, but didn’t (instead, the former president is gearing up to do fundraising for the resettled Afghan refugees - that’s great, he should … but, what about the folks who just got whipped and herded on the U.S.-Mexico border who look just like us?).
Maybe that’s asking too much. We just think that if no one is going to loudly and aggressively assert themselves on behalf of the Black Diaspora when trouble strikes, who will? Eyes will fall on, naturally, the Congressional Black Caucus … but, they have succumbed to their own troubled every two-year Chairperson rotation, which has left them with Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) who, unlike the previous and much more involved chair, shows no concern for rallying the Caucus at moments like this, has not even prioritized a Communications Director more than 9-months into her Chairmanship and is overseeing a Caucus Twitter feed that hasn’t been updated since July.
Meanwhile this week: the negotiations for passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act have crumbled. We saw that months ago as soon as it became a “bipartisan” exercise with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) deployed by Republicans to effectively sabotage the bill. Hence, more than a year after 9 minutes of horrific video showing the brutal murder of a Black man and the mass social disruption that followed, along with “Black Lives Matter” platitudes from companies wanting to hold on to Black consumers, no policy change. Also this week: Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) find very few resources and federal dollars set aside for them in the infrastructure bills pushing through Congress, leaving Black Caucus members like Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) so incensed about it that she’s announced she won’t vote for any of Biden’s Build Back Better until HBCU funding needs are met. We probably need to get to that point. There’s a lot at stake … and, unfortunately, a lot of folks in high places who aren’t acting like that’s the case.