Black Americans Aren’t Next, We Were First

We were written out of the founding documents of this country and have been denied our humanity ever since.

Over the past few days, the images of militarized police in riot gear shooting teargas and rubber bullets into crowds of protesters have plastered our screens. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see so much violence and unrest on the streets of the United States.

Black Americans are typically the target of state violence against protesters, that is not the case in this moment, which has left some asking “where are Black people?”

This has created robust discussion and reflection from Black people and those asking the question.

A longer version of the question is often posed: “Where are Black people, don’t they know they are next?”

The framing of this question is wrong, though.

Black people, next for what? Next to have laws that target us specifically? Next to have law enforcement target us specifically? Next to be unfairly detained and denied justice by the United States justice system?

Breaking news:

Black people are not next, we were first. We were written out of the founding documents of this country and have been denied our humanity ever since.

In 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the United States Supreme Court decided that the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of Black African descent, and therefore we could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens.

After Black Americans were released from the generational horror that was chattel slavery, we faced various systems of oppression, from sharecropping, to Jim Crow, to redlining, to mass incarceration.

We are not new to this.

It should not be surprising that Black Americans are responding to the question “where are Black people” with “that’s not on us.”

This is not to say that Black people do not care. Black people have been sounding the alarm on this country’s authoritarianism for centuries, but because anti-Blackness is woven into the fabric of public opinion, everyone ignored the warnings.

Now, President Trump is mobilizing Marines to Los Angeles.

What must happen moving forward is an acknowledgment that the path to our collective liberation is by people coming together for Black liberation. The laws being leveraged against every marginalized community are legal on the basis of a founding document that did not see Black people as people. This is the foundational struggle of the United States of America.

We can have a better America, but it will take marginalized communities standing with Black Americans in the fight for Black liberation.

So instead of asking Black Americans where we are, ask how you can help in the fight for lineage-based reparations, ask how you can fight to end mass incarceration, ask how you can stand with us in solidarity so we can be liberated from the physical, psychological and policy-based violence produced by the American brand of racism and white supremacy—together.

We must defeat fascism, and to do so, we must be together. To be together means standing with and for Black America.