It’s obvious now. We should have known all along.
By Mitchell S. Jackson Published: Nov 9, 2024
“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman.” —Malcolm X
“The ultimate logic of racism is genocide, and if one says that one is not good enough to have a job that is a solid quality job, if one is not good enough to have access to public accommodations, if one is not good enough to have the right to vote, if one is not good enough to live next door to him, if one is not good enough to marry his daughter because of his race. Then at that moment, that person is saying that that person who is not good to do all of this is not fit to exist or to live. And that is the ultimate logic of racism.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“They not like us.” —Kendrick Lamar
This undoubted nadir attests to an idea I’ve presented many times as a writing prompt in my college classrooms: The floor of the white man’s failures is the ceiling of the Black man’s expectations.
Not sure who said it.
Be clear: My sense of white power/supremacy is racist and patriarchal, i.e., the rule of white men. Be clear: My idea of white power/supremacy includes those who believe they’ll benefit from the rule of white men. Be clear: When I say white supremacy/power, I mean it as American’s most genuine founding principle. Be clear: What I mean by white power/supremacy is ways of thinking and being bound to end the same way Martin Luther King Jr. cautioned racism would end—in genocide.
Donald Trump’s victory .. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a628264...tion-2024/ .. lays bare the troubling-to-the-max truth that Vice President Kamala Harris never had a realistic shot to become the next president, that millions upon millions of Americans had predetermined to vote, at all costs, on behalf of white power/supremacy. That it mattered little-to-not-one-motherfucking-iota how much the vice president’s backstory affirmed the so-called American dream, or how excellent or qualified or experienced she was, or the fact that she has a clean criminal record and no bankruptcies. Her landslide loss made plain the truth that there was no policy she could propose to persuade a majority of white people, that it didn’t matter how much she preached about unity and peace and hope, that it mattered none the number of times she flashed her bright smile or how charismatic she was on SNL, that I was naive as fuck to think any of that would have ever been enough. Trump’s decisive win proves that most white folks, and those who covet proximity to them (the worst white supremacists are the ones who aren’t white, says my former colleague Dr. Shanee Wallace), were in fact single-issue voters whose single issue was ratifying a great myth of whiteness: The worst white man is more worthy than the best of anybody else.
Harris’s resounding defeat also reminded me that white America hates my mama (and my daughter .. https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a43461751/g...-daughter/ .. and my sisters and my aunts and my female cousins), that they wish ill on who I come from, first, and me a close second.
Contemplating the aforementioned mendacity kept me in bed till well past my normal wakeup the day after the election. A couple times throughout the morning, my eyes got wet, and I screamed the way I do when I’m in pain .. https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a603...ack-grief/ . Other times I clamped my wet eyes shut and gave myself the grace of a few more minutes of lethargy. Other times, I lay across my bed and tried deep breathing. When at last I decided I couldn’t lie there forever, I got up, stretched, and did push-ups and squats and ran a couple miles on the treadmill, all while admonishing myself that my efforts were something akin to training for the trials sure to come. Next, I checked several exit polls and found data that quantified what I’d known in my heart.
Per ABC’s exit polls, 60 percent of white men, 53 percent of white women, and 55 percent of Latino men (plus an alarming 21 percent of Black men .. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a627924...le-voters/ ) voted for Trump.
Now, there are the numbers, and then there is how the numbers make me feel. What’s important is a feeling. What’s important is a feeling. What’s important are those feelings.
James Baldwin said, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time.” Rage when I slunk into the UPS Store, where I keep a mailbox, and every white person I saw lowered their eyes or looked away; when not a single one of them, as was common, offered a greeting. Rage in the grocery store at white women in yoga pants traipsing through the aisles like all was right with the world. Rage as I idled at a red light, and it struck me that every other white driver or walker I saw might’ve voted against the humanity of my mama—a woman vulnerable in every way that counts—and me. Sorrow when the notary that arrived at my house was a Black woman, and all I could do to commiserate was offer a meek “How you feel?” To which she responded with a half nod that was no parts solace. Sorrow again when I went to check on an order for blinds, saw another Black woman, and, because I was embarrassed, left my immense disappointment tacit. The angst of wondering if the white dude who delivered my Uber Eats that night was also a culprit in our intended undoing. It was the spiral of wondering which of the white people in my orbit stepped into the private Plato’s Cave of a voting booth and darkened a bubble against my mama and me. The spiral of wondering which Black dudes I know were part of that traitorous 20-plus percent. On Thursday, it was the paranoia of trying to tally how many people in Sky Harbor Airport were my nemesis; it was scowling at every white person who laughed a little too loud or who seemed a little too carefree. It was despising the trio of Latino men wearing work gear who chuckled among themselves. It was the urge not to step aside for white people as I made my way to the gate, not to allow a white woman in line in front of me while we boarded. It was questioning the tenor of my civility to the white woman working as an attendant on my flight. It was the immediate enmity of you you you you I felt for the white dude beside me in baggage claim at my destination, a man wearing an Army-fatigue trucker cap—Oakley glasses perched on its brim—and scuffed moc toe boots, a getup I judged as telltale of his politics. It was turning on the radio of my rental car to find it tuned to Fox Satellite Radio and cursing the stranger who had the car before me. It was checking into a hotel and critiquing the helpfulness of the obese white man working the front desk as obvious penance for what he’d done to my mama and me. It has been dazing through these last days dogged by the question Who can I trust? Who can I trust? It has been cautioning myself these past seventy-two hours against becoming the hate that hate produced, not for the sake of altruism but because I know that hate can destroy me as fast as it does anybody else.
So help me, this is the truth of my here and now. Maybe I’ll search for silver linings next week.
THIS IS THE CRAP THAT WILL ROT YOUR HEAD
