We cannot turn back.
Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. "I Have a Dream" Speech

Black Lives Matter Protest Times Square New York City June 7 2020
(Image by Anthony Quintano from flickr) Details DMCA
I've heard the stories. I've heard about the opioid addictions, the homelessness, the alienation, and isolation. I'm not without empathy, yet I'm thinking about those countless millions, crossing the seas at the bottom of ships. Who had empathy for them? "The Forgotten"?
Rather now I'm asked to remember "the Forgotten."
Cruelty is something that as a black I've come to know intimately as it has been a common and historical practice to dish out to people labeled "inferior." "Criminal."
But "the Forgotten" these days are those white men, without jobs, because someone has taken them, without substantial income, because someone has taken that income potential too. After the Great Depression and WW II, when white men received a form of affirmative action, government assistance was restricted. Reserved for whites predominantly. Unless you are willing to be the first black family on the block of hostile whites who, feeling entitled, begin to worry about the anticipated drop in the appreciation of homes in the neighborhood.
However, the government restricted blacks from capitalizing on educational opportunities as well as decent housing. The American Dream provided safe neighborhoods and opportunities for white men-- and no one cared to see the Forgotten Black American.
We were, however, remembered when America wanted to learn to play the blues. White youths, sitting at the side of blues men and women, Sun House and Rosetta Tharpe, expressed what it was like to be black in America, note by note, and when it came time for the young whites to return home, they did so without asking someone like Bessie Smith, what happens when you need to see a doctor? What happens, Ms. Smith?
If white men wanted another form of entertainment, they would gather up some rope, hunt down a victim, and find a tree suitable for hanging that victim. The whole family could enjoy this event and no one asked the victim if he had raped a white woman. Had he done anything, other than be black?
We are remembered as cooks, nannies, and maids. My mother, in her twenties, worked for a family or two before trying to work for a white doctor as an assistant. Eventually, she had to give that up. Did anyone ask what she would do next when she had a newborn to care for?
My father, in Arkansas, before he traveled North, picked cotton. Certainly, as a child, he didn't dream of picking cotton. It wouldn't benefit him as it has the US as a whole. Before him, my grandfather became a janitor in Chicago in 1929, the year my mother was born. She already had an older brother. My grandfather wanted to buy a house. And why couldn't he do so, America? That same year, in last 1929, my grandmother, light enough to pass, stood in a bread line, in downtown Chicago. If those around her in that line had known, I'm sure she would have been asked to step away. Go home. Empty handed.
We were forgotten until Malcolm made America remember us. Diane Nash, Ella Baker, and Kwame Ture did the same. Mamie Till Mobley insisted that America look. Dr. Martin L. King drew the cameras and the press and some 250,000 people. He boldly told the world that black America had received "a bad check." It was a "check which has come back marked insufficient funds".
King was too uppity. So was Malcolm, Medgar, George Jackson, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur. Too visible, boycotting and reflecting to the world the true meaning of American "innocence".
Nonetheless, Nixon and Reagan didn't forget black America. While insisting that white America was in fact a nation of innocent people, there was this problem: crime and welfare queens, residing in those urban areas! The problem with America had nothing to do with the refusal of white America to hold themselves accountable for the violence perpetrated against black Americans. No. The problem was black Americans!
These politicians envisioned for their preferred constituents, an invasion of dangerous predators. Thieves and, worse, rapists! Neither politicians could build or fill up prisons with black men fast enough. A safe America is one in which the streets are cleansed of black people. House them in prison and gentrify the old neighborhoods were they use to live. It's those incarcerated black bodies, writes historian Timothy Snyder, that increased "the electoral power of the non-incarcerated people around them"; for those imprisoned bodies, were "are converted into someone else's right to elect people who build more prisons", creating more "injustices" by assuring more crime is likely.
Flying bear spray and sticks cracks heads of police officers protecting the Capitol" "End of days" means something else in this moment!
The Dictator's right, huh?
I'm not suggesting that white men remain a "Forgotten" population. I certainly wouldn't want to challenge their "victimhood". I can see where freely enslaving, raping and then hunting down my ancestors was a right worth fighting a war over, losing over 258,000 citizens. But to paraphrase Blanche Du Bois, "somethings are not forgivable! Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable!"
Maybe Nixon and Reagan acted too stealthy for these modern-day Confederate, Neo-nazi, MAGA worshipers. Maybe they just didn't understand that these presidents, the federal and state governments were trying to help them. The middle-class whites got the message. They winked back! But both groups should have known that after WWII the gig was up. A little reading would have helped. It's right there in the books they refuse to read: that "drawbridge" Snyder speaks of was pulled up behind their grandfathers and parents so the blacks wouldn't attempt to follow!
An injustice, an anti-democratic move that has, well, hit home.
America should be better than this. Black Americans, believing in a democratic society was possible, worked to define freedom and defend democracy for the whole of this country. But America prefers to hand black Americans "a bad check". Over and over again.
Before this latest phase of fascists and oligarchs, before the MEGA supreme court erased Roe, who had benefited from the sacrifices of black Americans?
I remember trying to tell my story, the story of my experience as a black woman to white women only to be told, indirectly to be sure, that their children were most important to them. Indeed, their children are the past, present and future of the world! What can we do, Lenore? Looking beyond them, I would recognize their children in the white males who were my chairs and deans, landlords and bankers, media celebrities and Hollywood icons. Groomed for the future, these children are handled with kid gloves by anxious white middle-class woman who, because of that unforgivable to me but forgotten history for these white women, couldn't recognize in my face a fellow citizen's.
So it's not hard to understand the 55% of the white women's vote for a convicted felon. A man who like to grab women by the you-know-what!
I can't reach out to the ones considered "the Forgotten" today. I see that day, January 6, 2021, when most of the MEGA crowd invaded the Capitol to inflict violence on the Vice President and Congress persons while my own people must endure the humiliation of witnessing this same population re-branded as "victims" of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Affirmative Action. Victims of wasteful spending on black people, who didn't deserve it anyway. Because black Americans are invaders! Exploited people made this country an industrial giant only for this country to teach citizens and the world that "woke" is bad, Toni Morrison is worse, and black history, is once again, of no relevance to white America. After all, blacks have taken advantage of the innocence of white America!
If this isn't cruelty, what is?
So here we are. Some Americans looking to the Southern border and, seeing move invaders. Their replacement! Mexicans and Haitians. An invasion of the United States, a country for whites only, so their narrative goes, has always been threatened by invaders-- since the beginning.
I see how the scowling face of 47 makes would make some blacks feel like the guy has been around since the beginning, lurking behind any unforgivable event in human history. Maybe that is why citizens stopped celebrating and gathering for 2-minute hate sessions to consider the impact of his call for an end to birth-right citizenship. Fifty-nine percent oppose the executive order: Democrats 89% and Republicans 36%.
And while 44% of Americans wanted to see the backside of DEI, 51% opposed to order to shut it down because that would mean white women too!
In terms of fossil fuel drilling, remember, "drill baby drill", well that's not a sentiment that the American public shared with 47. Fifty-nine percent of Americans believe that the US shouldn't withdraw from in the Paris climate accords.
Most Americans don't care for the lack of everything decent witnessed in Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and the lot of oligarchs, counting on 47 to sign, sign, sign, executive order after executive order yield more wealth and subsequent power to them.
And, for now, 47's approval rating has been tanking. Only 47% of the country, according to Reuters/psos poll, thinks the guy has a clue. "The Forgotten" voted for him to do away with Mexicans, Haitians, and black Americans. At least, don't force them to know anything about American history. World history! The conquest of land and the genocide of indigenous people while introducing enslavement and exploitation to the "New World".
Forty-seven's voters, for the most part, accept government assistance, particularly when it comes to Medicaid!
"The Forgotten" who would insist that my experience in the US is of no worth, isn't someone I want to sit down next to and have a proverbial beer with. Besides, I don't drink beer!
Despite all I have said, all of the chaos and division to come, black Americans can't turn back. Our ancestors spilled blood on this land and in its rivers. We don't need anyone to tell us what to do. We know! If we aren't hampered by a belief that this is the "End of Days," then we know there is work to be done.
What is our alternative? Turn to fascism? Bow to the oligarchs?
We will again seek out freedom and envision democracy.
What else can we do?