Contrary to white media messaging, anti-blackness as a global pandemic is not a new phenomenon. The media coverage overwhelms the black viewer with heart-breaking images of their kinfolk in Nigeria beaten in the streets where many have died in protest. My question though isn’t why is this happening. Rather, I question the media’s motives for this showcase, as there are countless injustices carried out throughout the diaspora daily that do not make it into the news. As I have said countless times before, the media is not a trustworthy source. The media is an institution, perhaps the institution of all institutions of all institutions, that maintains continued access, and has a contentious path into the minds of its viewers. 

My conclusion is that this imaging is not to raise awareness, but to push to the black culture to to a bitter end, to engender feelings of despair and helplessness. In an election year, these images incite a fear that underscores voting as more significant that any other time and the most resonant means to an end. This systemic nudge proves analogous to the insult and injury of coercing one allotted a single crayon to color within socially implemented lines. 

Thinking back to the red summer we’ve had where many took to the streets to react to the overt racism in policing, I can’t help but note that it went from George Floyd to Kamala Harris, from raised fists to the electric slide alongside our mortal enemy, from “say their names” to “vote,” rather quickly. I stand by my initial ideas that many of the “protests” were socially engineered reaction to get in front of white supremacist fears of a separatist rhetoric that would certainly have gained traction and support in the hours following Floyd’s viral murder footage. What we witnessed was a not a protest to the treatment of black people in American, but blackness becoming what seemed like water, but actually was hardwood to keep the flames of white supremacy a burning. This is perhaps most pronounced in how, yet again, black abjection becomes fuel to participate in a white supremacist system and help a white man assume the face of the forces that oppress us. Because let’s be honest. Vote, from texts and calls to advertisements from so-called celebrities is merely code for “Vote for Biden.”

I am more convinced now than before that the ubiquitous protests functioned to silence and villianize those who decided to sit the election out. Accessing the situation in hindsight, the protests should have DEMANDED that Floyd be more than a platform of false promise and instead, become a pillar of actual change. In short, we as a collective, should have protested the election and the entire electoral process.

The black collective is being stealthy seduced into being an ally for whites shamed by Trump’s revelation that whiteness is not a privilege but a silly logic that enables the unapologetically inept to sit in the “president’s” chair as long as he’s the same color as the house.

No president, nor any state legislature, has a plan to implement systemic strategy to ensure the success of the black collective. All black success in this country continues to be inspite of a system that exists to destroy them. Whether student loans, inadequate pay, or healthcare, this country continues to preclude black advancement and safety. 

Tis’ a strange feeling to be more likely to be shot dead in this country than to pay off student loans or start a business.

My words are not to discourage my people from voting or to reprimand those who have already cast their ballots. Rather, my words are to underscore the ways in which all roads in this society lead to white supremacy. While white supremacy employs the bullet as a way to tranquilize the black community, it is up to us to be the master of our own fate regardless of who’s president. 

Furthermore, Africans in America live in a country that attained global dominance do to our bodily capitol, thus, it is in obligations to the ancestors and our collective selves that we demand more.