Elections have penalties. It’s virtually a cliché at this level, one thing mentioned both earlier than an election to rally the troops to the polls or after shedding an election. It’s an introspection level, the place in evaluating and contrasting political insurance policies, the stark actuality between the actions of the victor and the guarantees of the defeated candidate is made clear, not simply to the losers, however oftentimes to the winners, too.
That’s what we’re seeing in Washington, D.C., significantly within the Southeast part. Black of us are being harassed for every thing from smoking weed on their stoop, which in D.C. is authorized, until you’re in Part 8 housing, which implies you’re beneath federal authority, the place you possibly can lose your house, to easily recording the mass presence of the Nationwide Guard, FBI, DEA, and D.C. police marching via the streets.
Black neighborhoods are beneath a siege, and I’ll guess even former New York Metropolis mayor Rudy Guilinani, the most well-liked champion of cease and frisk and damaged window policing within the nation, should be impressed.
In America, our politics lie alongside a philosophical spectrum. On the poles are communism on the left, which I can’t discover that many adherents to in 2025, and fascism on the precise, the place we are able to uncover fanatics all through the present Trump administration.
However, normally, the political middle is the place most Individuals like to seek out their politicians. Heart proper or middle left is about how a lot cash to spend, or not spend, on the priorities of the get together in energy.
Nonetheless, the 2024 presidential election wasn’t in regards to the middle. It was about an existential risk to Black individuals. A transparent selection between a standard political candidate in Kamala Harris for the Democratic Celebration, and a prison felon who’d been discovered responsible for sexual assault in Donald Trump for the GOP.
For rational individuals, even in case you didn’t like Harris’ insurance policies, or in case you didn’t know a single factor about her insurance policies, the selection for president ought to have been as straightforward as pondering, which one in every of these candidates would I belief round my household? The Black girl with the cackling snicker, or the white man with extra prison indictments than now we have fingers and toes, and whose finest good friend is a pedophile?
Yeah, powerful selection.
For almost all of Black individuals, even with slippage amongst some Black male voters, enticed by the notion of embracing misogyny, an approximation to energy, and who have been transactional of their philosophy, we noticed the risk and voted accordingly. However there was one group of loud and unsuitable Black of us who populated social media telling Black individuals to not vote, or to vote for every thing besides the highest of the poll, as a result of of their eyes, if the Republican and Democratic events have been snakes, then it didn’t matter who was in workplace.
FBA (Foundational Black Individuals) and ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) of us.
Should you’re studying this, I’m fairly positive you’re aware of this crowd. Sure, I do know that they’re technically two totally different teams, beneath two totally different leaders, however I don’t significantly care about their particulars or their leaders. Their ideology of xenophobia, fetishization of ancestry and lineage, and the distraction that they use to divide Black individuals primarily based upon whether or not or not one’s ancestry is tied to slavery, is a white supremacist dream.
It’s virtually as if the long-serving FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover rose from the lifeless, despatched a COINTELPRO 2.0 battle plan to a bunch of gullible Black of us, after which unleashed a torrent of flag-bearing, hashtag and meme-loving, xenophobic, Black social media accounts on the Black group, after which watched the magic occur.
Why does this matter?
It issues as a result of data, significantly within the Black group, is golden. Of the teams on this nation, we as Black of us have all the time wanted to create our unbiased types of data, whether or not or not it’s Black newspapers or Black Twitter, to inform our tales our approach. And there’s an inherent belief that each one the actors in spreading data are working in our greatest curiosity.
That’s not FBA and ADOS.
Earlier than the election, these two teams did their finest to unfold as a lot misinformation about candidate Harris as doable. In a barely masked effort to embrace the speaking factors of the Trump administration, they challenged whether or not Harris was a Black girl, simply as Trump did on the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists. They denigrated her as a “cop,” ignoring the truth that the Black group wants each prison protection attorneys and prison prosecutors making choices about Black individuals within the judicial system.
And, most egregious of all, they, as a tacit voter suppression tactic, urged Black of us to not vote, all as a result of they claimed not to have the ability to see the distinction between a small Democratic candidate and a white supremacist, white nationalist, fascist prison president.
Now, because the navy sweeps via D.C., and there are GOP politicians brazenly speaking about bringing the identical scenario to different Black cities and neighborhoods, these chaos brokers all of the sudden have found that when a Black group is beneath martial regulation, that the state doesn’t care about whether or not or not your individuals have lived on this nation for the reason that Mayflower or simply arrived from Kingston.
They’re scrambling to create social media discussions on X and different platforms, the place they’re now shocked, shocked, that the white supremacist they mentioned was the identical as the beautiful Black woman who simply wished to present them housing credit, shield civil rights features, and possibly, simply possibly, not be loopy, is doing the loopy white supreamcist issues he mentioned he’d do.
They’re studying that adopting a nativist nationalist ideology of blood and soil doesn’t embrace them within the blood or the soil. All as a result of the maws of the monster don’t care in case you’re as xenophobic as they’re, along with your “diaspora wars.” He’s nonetheless gonna go into the Nationwide African American Historical past Museum and strip you of your historical past. Know why? To paraphrase Malcolm X, they don’t grasp you since you’re from America, Canada, Ghana, or Trinidad; they grasp you since you’re Black.”
But it surely’s too late now for FBA/ADOS of us. They’ll run beneath the banner of lineage, put yet one more American flag on their profiles, and assume that their techniques of Black division are gonna in some way end in reparations for Black Individuals. Nonetheless, most Black individuals understand at this level that they’re fools. Discredited fools.
Somebody as soon as mentioned that Newt Gingrich was a dumb individual’s concept of a sensible individual, and the identical could be mentioned of FBA and ADOS: a dumb Black individual’s concept of a sensible Black motion. However I don’t blame the dumb individuals. Everybody searches for a philosophy to information their lives, and we belief, whether or not it’s faith or social justice, that the motion’s inherent premise is to maneuver the person or the group in a constructive, ahead method.
To fight the assault on Washington, D.C.’s Black group and the Black communities to come back, whether or not as a provocation to justify incarcerating extra Black individuals via police contact, or voter suppression through the midterms, with the navy performing because the intimidation pressure, FBA and ADOS aren’t to be trusted as a motion. As a result of they went bankrupt as a philosophy once they couldn’t see, determine, or strategize towards the risk that, to an clever group like the vast majority of Black voters, was proper there of their face.
In the end, the actions of Donald Trump are his duty. He’s the arsonist carrying the gasoline in Washington, D.C., and he’s accountable for the fireplace that he creates. However FBA/ADOS of us have been decided to inform Black of us residing in D.C. and all through the nation that the firefighter and the arsonist have been the identical. And for that time alone, you shouldn’t hearken to a single phrase they are saying once more.
As a result of elections have penalties.
Lawrence Ross is the writer of “The Divine 9: The Historical past of African American Fraternities and Sororities” and “Blackballed: The Black & White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses.” He’s additionally the founding father of TheMetaphorClub.com, a brand new social media platform that emphasizes group, selflessness, and genuine relationships. He lives in Los Angeles along with his spouse, April.
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