As the Status Quo Shatters, Afrofuturists’ Visions Offer a Way Forward |
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Years ago, I stood at the Black Fist statue, and felt the heaviness of George Floyd’s death. I also felt hope from the protests in his name. The corner of 38th St. and Chicago Ave. in Minneapolis was liberated by the people into an art-filled, open space. The joy was electric. Maybe, I thought, maybe this is a glimpse of a Black future.
Now, nearly six years after Floyd’s murder, the state violence that took his life has expanded its targets to include white protesters, journalists, and politicians. Two new memorials have been built in Minneapolis. One is for Renee Nicole Good, a lesbian mother and poet, and another for Alex Pretti, a nurse. Both were killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Right-wing state violence, on every level, is trying to stomp out the vision of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy and replace it with plans for a white ethnostate. If the right wing wins, its victory will come at a cost. The United States will likely implode. Already, millions of people in the U.S. have lost faith in the rule of law, a faith that was shaky to begin with. Already, the U.S. has transformed into an early-stage authoritarian state with President Donald Trump threatening the integrity of the midterm elections.
In the face of increasing right-wing violence and national implosion, Black America has to ask questions: What does freedom look like after the U.S.? How does the Black freedom struggle reimagine the “promised land”? Black writers have long mapped alternative futures that led away from the “American Dream.” Some are Pan-African. Some envision a worker’s democracy. Some articulate a new religion of change. What they share in common is a vision for a Black future free of racism that builds community on the lessons learned from surviving slavery. It is a vision of a new world struggling to be born from the ruins of this one.
Black History Has the Power to Ignite Movements. That’s Why the Right Fears It.
“I will fucking kill you,” the Indianapolis cop told 17-year-old Black teen Trevion Taylor, dragging him from his car. The young man’s eyes filled with fear. He and his friends were at an anti-ICE rally when police stopped them, claiming they “smelled weed.” The cop’s casual threatening of Taylor’s life is just one example of the current widespread increase in state violence. This growing violence includes ICE killings of migrants and protesters.
Today it is ICE or police. Yesterday it was the FBI’s COINTELPRO or the National Guard killing student protesters at Kent State. When the people mobilize to protect their rights or each other, they are killed. The tear gas used looks like smoke from a nation on fire.
Right-wing state violence is trying to stomp out the vision of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy and replace it with plans for a white ethnostate.
Right-wing state violence is trying to stomp out the vision of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy and replace it with plans for a white ethnostate.
“I suspect [we’re] integrating into a burning house,” Martin Luther King Jr. told fellow civil rights activist Harry Belafonte in 1968. Belafonte recalled King’s warning at a 2005 town hall with Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. In the decades since, the flames have risen higher and higher. They rose during the Reagan era. They rise higher in the Trump era. The right has been so intent on destroying the seeds of diversity and tolerance planted by the civil rights movement that it is willing to destroy the U.S. and rule over its ashes.
Right now, we face a political crisis. President Trump wants to “nationalize” the midterm elections. He sent the FBI to raid a Georgia voting center and take ballots and records. He transformed ICE into a paramilitary force and more than doubled its personnel from 10,000 to 22,000, luring new recruits by using white supremacist ads. Trump has called Democrats “traitors,” threatened to kill them, and labeled “antifa” a terrorist threat. Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, has urged him to use ICE to “surround the polls” in order to stop Democrats from “stealing the election.” There’s a very real constitutional fight ahead.
Right now, Black America is in the crosshairs. Trump waited for Black History Month to unleash a racist video of the Obamas portrayed as monkeys. This follows his executive order to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and the “Department of Government Efficiency” cuts that led to a dramatic increase in Black women’s unemployment, with nearly 300,000 losing work. Overlap that data with the 25 percent of........