Black freedom was never up for vote | US election 2024

I almost wish someone would ask us: How does it feel to be a pit stop? To be a gas station where floundering political campaigns stop for the laying on of hands; where a baritone black minister holds the president's shoulder and, between blessings, utters some version of the declaration, “We know Joe”? And where that president passes the torch to a black candidate who can soak up black pop culture and exploit an administration busy giving a standing ovation to the butcher of Gaza.

I almost wish someone would ask, before the politicians take off their Oxford shoes: How does it feel to know they are only here for one night? To know (as is now an open secret) that while they promise we are all in the same boat, they have only come along to take advantage of us. To make us promises and then scurry off to fundraising dinners before we can whisper, “Now be quiet, don't explain.”

Isn't it time to stop allowing ourselves to be torn between those who stand with the genocide perpetrators and those who dream of a day of vengeance for our survival? Can't we saddle up and build a world away from those who dance to our music in the clubs but turn us away at the entrance? Who shoot us when we cry for help and spread minstrel memes of those we killed as if they were digital lynching postcards?

Why should we settle for waiting for evil to enlighten us? Being beaten like mules for four years, promised that this time there really will be “a change” while the earth withers, Nazis are inspired, and presidential candidates openly challenge each other to golf.

This time will be no different. Either the lynch mob that marched to the Capitol with gallows ropes and Confederate flags will win, or those who urge us to look beyond the insults they spit at us and “focus on what unites us.” It's a battle between those who celebrate the reinstatement of castration as a punishment in a penal system that disproportionately arrests and convicts black people, and those who take pride in “prosecuting the case.” It will be a “triumph of the will” or “keep quiet about the genocide. I'm speaking.”

The US has proven to be a country where a left-wing black candidate who is not primarily accountable to white liberals is unelectable. The few brave ones who speak out against ethnic cleansing abroad are chased off the stage with a stick by Super PACs.

As for the rest, their surrogates openly admit that paying even lip service to our liberation is a ploy to gain our support, and that they will eventually “turn” to the middle. That is, after luring with freedom, they will move closer to the people who ridicule “wokeness” – that is, the conscious skepticism of black people toward the good intentions of the settler colony – and prefer the more sober proselytizing about the deep state and secret, globalist, Jewish conspiracies in their fake Viking helmets.

US electoral politics remains hostile to black liberation. While racists bask in the likely return of a president who promises to “retaliate” for them, no black candidate can win by uttering a word about reparations for slavery, agreeing that Black Lives Matter, or making statements that are seen as sympathetic to the Defund the Police movement. Criticism of the bloated budgets of institutions that employ and protect the men and women who shoot us in our nightgowns and leave us to die on the kitchen floor when we call them for help is toxic in a US election campaign.

And yet we are supposed to be excited. We are supposed to be excited about black representation and the “rise” of degenerate colonial rule. We are supposed to be happy for Eric Adams, despite his fight to keep solitary confinement in prisons. We are supposed to be happy for Barack Obama, despite his imperialist wars. We are supposed to be happy for Kamala Harris, despite her criminal parents whose children skip school. We are supposed to be happy for Cornel West, despite his love, he will find a way. Tim Scott.

Should such a system, which punishes any program for black freedom, be rewarded with black energy? Should we still accept as wise the maxim that “progress is slow” when Nazism advances overnight? Should we accept standing at the door, cap in hand, as they speed past in their motorcades? To listen once again to lectures about pragmatism? To be told that we must put our hope in a society where you can't win an election without appealing to racists?

Vote if you must. Why not? But this time, as we close the curtain of the voting booth, perhaps we should also pivot. And turn our backs on a system that still sees our liberation as a burden. Reorient our political identity around the growing black anti-colonial internationalism that does not, after promising to fight racism, seek to win over racists. That does not seek to “make our voices heard against lynching,” but to make those who would lynch hesitate.

We must get past the merry-go-round of politicians who say every four years, “This is our time,” and then “We must wait even longer.” We must pour this snake oil on the streets. No more waiting for the messiah among democratic politicians. No one wants to be our “vengeance.” Patience has only led us to the gates of lynch mob rule.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.