Absent A Cohesive And United Awakening African-Americans In Grave Danger…

The United States is a Republican-run coun­try with breaks for Democratic exec­u­tive lead­er­ship when the vot­ers are tired or dis­sat­is­fied with Republican lead­er­ship at the top.
Ultimately, how­ev­er, the coun­try is ruled by Republican poli­cies at the state lev­el leg­isla­tive­ly and book­end­ed by the Supreme Court on the oth­er end.
The man­i­fes­ta­tion of this is evi­dent in even good poli­cies cre­at­ed and enact­ed in the best of times for Democrats, à la, laws like the Affordable Care Act enact­ed under the pop­u­lar Democrat Obama come under con­tin­u­ous assault by Republicans and was saved the last time by Republican John McCain, in his now famous thumbs down vote.
Other Democratic ini­tia­tives passed under exi­gent cir­cum­stances dur­ing Democratic lead­er­ship have also come under increased Republican assault and have either been repealed by Congress or destroyed by the Supreme Court.

In 2016 while a pop­u­lar Democrat, Barack Obama, was in the white house, the John Roberts Supreme Court evis­cer­at­ed the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed under anoth­er Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, in its (Shelby County V Holder) decision.
On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, over­rul­ing an ear­li­er deci­sion, Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (Austin), that allowed pro­hi­bi­tions on inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures by corporations.
The deci­sion (cit­i­zens unit­ed) was a crush­ing blow to the work of many, includ­ing the late Republican US Senator from Arizona, John McCain, and for­mer Democratic US Senator Russ Feingold and oth­ers, to stem the flood of dark mon­ey into polit­i­cal campaigns.
The Roberts court ruled that large cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple, and there­fore they were allowed to flood polit­i­cal cam­paigns with end­less streams of cash, drown­ing out the voic­es of the lit­tle man.
On Friday, June 24, 2022, the John Roberts Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade, the land­mark piece of leg­is­la­tion that made access to abor­tion the law of the land. This leg­is­la­tion has been in effect since 1972. 

Many in the pun­dit­ry class bemoaned that fla­grant act of raw judi­cial pow­er as unprece­dent­ed, rep­re­sent­ing the first time in mod­ern his­to­ry that the court had rolled back rights that gen­er­a­tions of Americans had pre­vi­ous­ly enjoyed.
That assess­ment was incor­rect and flawed. The court had only six (6) years ear­li­er destroyed the fire­wall around vot­ing rights in the Shelby County V Holder deci­sion, there­by allow­ing a flood of anti-vot­ing laws all across Republican-run states.
Years ago, hav­ing noticed some of the trends emerg­ing from the polit­i­cal right, I com­ment­ed to some asso­ciates and fam­i­ly mem­bers that Black Americans were in deep per­il of being returned to slavery.
My asser­tions were based two-fold, (1) the anti-black pos­ture adopt­ed by the Republican par­ty and (2) the sense a large part of the African-American com­mu­ni­ty seemed to have that the civ­il rights fights were won and over with.
The prob­lem with hav­ing that sense of com­fort is that the peo­ple teach­ing their chil­dren to hate are doing so with a renewed sense of urgency based large­ly on their sense of enti­tle­ment, griev­ance, fear, and their dwin­dling pop­u­la­tion numbers.
As a con­se­quence, African-Americans adopt­ing a pos­ture that all is well are in grave dan­ger of hav­ing all the gains they were hand­ed by their ances­tors reversed.

Black his­to­ry is being removed from schools and Universities. Teachers risk los­ing their jobs and even going to prison for teach­ing the truth about black his­to­ry, that black peo­ple were here Hundreds of years before the Europeans.
African-Americans are forced to pay huge poll tax­es to secure the right to vote. Long lines mean that vot­ers in urban areas must stand in lines for up to 8 hours to vote.
Standing in line for 6 – 8 hours is a full work­day. It is a poll tax. White vot­ers in sub­ur­ban and rur­al areas are not forced to under­go those indig­ni­ties to exer­cise their franchise.
The Continuation and esca­la­tion of police bru­tal­i­ty and mur­der against African-Americans are a man­i­fes­ta­tion of a process cre­at­ed from slav­ery to keep Blacks in their place.
Even as I write this arti­cle, state leg­is­la­tures are work­ing assid­u­ous­ly to degrade the will of vot­ers in urban areas by remov­ing pow­ers from pro­gres­sive Mayors and Prosecutors and hand­ing them to Republican governors.
They will not stop until they return all Black peo­ple to chains on cor­po­rate plan­ta­tions (farms).

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.