WE AS ONE

GILBERT YOUNG

WE AS ONE

This image represents blacks' relationship with the United States

This image symbolizes the relationship between the other people of color and the U.S. too

If we don't all get together, as best we can, and pull
the orange dragon and his minions are going to eat us alive.
I don't understand how so many POCs did not anticipate white people doing exactly what they did this election

The other things some don't seem to understand is basic.

The person causing problems can damage you without damaging themselves very much
White people have to clean up white racism because they are collectively to blame for it
But it's our problem

in the same way that

a criminal is swinging the ax toward your head,
is your problem and not the criminal's
Keeping your head attached to your body
is your problem
and nobody else's
even if the criminal is obviously the one to blame

Venting about white people feels right.
It is right
But most of the solution to our political power problem is not in changing white people
If we can keep the same 1/3rd of white people at our backs
as Obama did
we need to RE-solidify the people of color vote


Voting = Political Power
Political Power = Create Laws on Paper
Political Power + Laws on Paper - Equitable Law Enforcement

Over the last few years, we've been battling trying to get equitable law enforcement. The police seemed to be shooting people of color at will over the last few years. Even so, that's not peak white violence. The white mob coming for you and yours without any pretense of law and order represents peak white violence. 

We haven't seen that again yet. But it's coming. 

The white hate groups have jumped up in number since Donald Trump started running for office. Since he has became the president elect, the white supremacists have been emboldened even more.  The first and strongest racist rhetoric is already coming from white children and white teens. They are filter-less megaphones for their parents and they repeat what their peers say as well. 

If Mean Tangerine's mouth continues as it has, white adults will be more and more in your face with white supremacy at the work place etc. And as the rhetoric ratchets up white tensions the white violence we saw in the 1980s will return

Just as important though, the protections we have on paper, the laws that are written will begin to be changed, minimized, or erased. It could be we're about to be re-fighting old battles. 

I doubt he can, but if Mean Tangerine and crew were to somehow reduce the number of undocumented workers prices of food and everything  else will go through the roof because the wages associated with the jobs that undocumented workers do will go up when they are done by Americans. If the wages don't go up and Americans refuse to be grossly underpaid, then the undocumented workers will have to be replaced. Convict Leasing sounds like an easy way to replace the new slaves  (undocumented workers) to me.   

If Trump cronies are talking about Japanese Internment camps as models for what to do with Muslims while they do "extreme vetting" then everything that we counted as heinous is about to be back on the table. 

Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. And part of black and brown history is being able to tell a white dragon from a weather vane. Bill and Hillary Clinton moved whichever way the white wind was blowing. Post Obama presidency, Hillary was not a current threat. What was at stake in the 2016 election was stagnation (Hillary) versus zooming backward 50 years (Trump). 

In 2020, even white weather vane type leadership may be a threat to black and brown people. Now that white leaders know what the white population wants to hear, they're going to say it --- on both sides of the aisle.  Trump getting into office is a major blow.  Black and brown people being UNAWARE that this man is/was a bigger threat than Hillary Clinton is part of the reason black and brown people did not behave like they KNEW that they had to jump 2/3rds of the white population to protect itself. 

We did not show up to protect ourselves, not in the same way we showed up to elect the first non-white male president. We knew we had to jump high or stay home when President Obama was running. I am not understanding why some of us did not understand the same thing when it came to keeping Trump out of office. 

The silver lining in this election is going to be this -- black and brown political complacency will be crucified if Mean Tangerine does not back down in the face of all the clap back he's getting lately.  The children born now will look at their parents and know they became so despairing, so afraid, that they were stunned into inaction

This election, in my opinion, was not the one to screw around with. 93 to 95% of black women who voted appear to agree with me. They voted for the Hillary-Block of Donald Trump. However, there's never going to be a good time to let the conservatives try to conserve white supremacy.  So a new political group has to be created. But it can't be led by a white man who left Dr. Martin Luther King's side and went directly to the whitest state in the nation, who thinks all blacks problems have to do with money and living in the ghetto INSTEAD OF white supremacy. 

Some black and brown people have been on that old yakkety-yak about making our own this and our own that. That is a slice of the solution, but it's not the biggest slice of the solution. Without black political power Black Wall Street happens again and again and again. 

Some demographics have a chunk that can pass as white. Black folks for the most part? Not gonna work. We have to stand up to be counted. We can't slip an slide into a safe zone. Riches don't protect us like they do everyone else. Even Oprah gets treated like a criminal sometimes.

We have to solidify the people of color vote and use that power to change the Democratic Party OR create a new party that has at least one-third of the white voting population.

I don't see another way forward for us except going back to Africa. And my ancestors spilled too much of their blood building this country up for me to even consider that. Besides, I ain't from there.

I'm a Black American. I'm going to hold on to what's mine for as long as I can.