The prospect of obtaining tangible freedom is seemingly implausible. Merely thinking about the concept, idea and existence of such is met with steep skepticism and hesitation. Freedom, the ability (power) to act, speak and think as one desires without restraint or hinderance; the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved. A verity foreign to the Negro, unfounded in the collective African diasporic experience, selective to the American experiment, and fairytale-esque in actualization and application. For freedom to be tangible, actualized for the marginalized and othered, there must be truth telling.
“For freedom to be tangible, actualized for the marginalized and othered, there must be truth telling.”
Truth be told, the highest court in the land has ceased to be the place of equitable justice and space of affirmed humanity through fair interpretation of the law. Already evidenced through its rollback of voting rights, indifference toward affirmative action, and resistance to equitable protection from an ongoing endemic.
This is no random occurrence or sudden happening, but an intentional generational plot to confront shifting demographics and demand for communal co-existence determined to recreate the country that once existed. A country emulated through the MET Gala’s Gilded Age inspired theme all while an unprecedented revelation of empire’s intent to revoke progress in the name of hypocritical morality and authoritarian theft occurred.
Politico’s leak of an initial draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito affirmed the truth known by Black and brown women about this nation’s power brokers — white men — when it comes to their bodies and decisions; a truth arguably known by all women.
Since the inception of this country the bodies of women, specifically Black women, have been seen through a lens of capitalistic commodification and engrained manipulation. One that has long deemed the bodies of Black and brown people as experimental and Black women’s bodies as living cadavers.
Engineered practices of abuse by white men resulting in irreversible acts of bodily harm done by the likes of J. Marion Sims. Praised as the father of modern gynecology, Sims practiced on enslaved Black women. Lucy, Anarcha, Betsey and unknown others suffered the pain of his experiments. Anarcha alone endured 30 surgeries without anesthesia. It was later revealed that “after he practiced his methods on Black women, Sims moved to New York City to open a women’s hospital in the 1850s. He started treating white women, but with anesthesia.”
The damning role, impact and effects of white autocracy and patriarchy have marred this country. Further, men’s inability to cease from infringing upon the inherent authority of women to choose what happens to their bodies will not cease the act or practice of abortions. As Traci Blackmon stated: “The fact is no Supreme Court decision, no state law, no theological shame game will ever stop abortions from happening. What it may do is stop safe abortions. It will drive many women back into dark alleys and kitchen tables. It will cause women for whom places like Planned Parenthood are their only safe and affordable choice to seek desperate measures to control their own bodies. And those who can afford to condemn others and continue to make their own decisions about their bodies … or have them made for them … will continue to access abortions in private clinics and offices and pretend they never went inside.”
“Within Alito’s draft we bear witness to the maligned trope regarding the role abortion plays within the African American community.”
Within Alito’s draft we bear witness to the maligned trope regarding the role abortion plays within the African American community. A narrative championed by white conservatives and evangelicals, and damningly adopted by Black theological conservatives absent of interrogation and implied messaging. All the while dismissing the autonomy of women, economic realities, lack of prenatal care, dynamics regarding health and life, and frankly matters far more complicated to the knowledge of men or anything I could place in this article.
Politico reports: “Alito’s draft opinion ventures even further into this racially sensitive territory by observing in a footnote that some early proponents of abortion rights also had unsavory views in favor of eugenics. ‘Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” Alito writes. “It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.’”
The regurgitation of such by a Supreme Court justice should alarm the staunchest of religious Pharisees while also jolting broader society into direct action. The ramifications of such a ruling should alarm us all, for certainly it won’t cease with Roe v. Wade. The prospect of justice will shift.
From Politico: “The overturning of Roe would almost immediately lead to stricter limits on abortion access in large swaths of the South and Midwest, with about half of the states set to immediately impose broad abortion bans. Any state could still legally allow the procedure.”
“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” Alito’s draft concludes. “Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”
“The uplift of the age-old argument of ‘states’ rights’ creates an avenue to enter a period of prohibition never seen.”
Revealed is a strategy toward regression. At stake is the livelihood and welfare of the country. At stake are the rights of Black and brown communities. At stake is the affirmed existence and rights of LGBTQ neighbors. At stake is every ruling that has tried to construct an equitable country built upon the tangible accessibility to justice. Yet, the uplift of the age-old argument of “states’ rights” creates an avenue to enter a period of prohibition never seen. An era more damning than anything Strom Thurmond and Jerry Falwell could construct. We are witnessing the truth of imperial violence and white hegemonic fear manifested through systemic, generational, patriarchal and state-sanctioned death. Clear indications of a nation becoming a death-dealing hell.
The truth is we exist in a nation that is sick. A country that is being who it’s always been. The evidence reveals we are about to enter a new era of state’s rights and generational repeals. Arguably, “we ain’t seen nothing yet.” However, discontent and distance won’t change the reality. Deep resistance, confrontation and a true strategy is our only solution; it’s all we have.
Jamar A. Boyd II serves the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference as senior manager of organizational impact. He earned a bachelor of science degree in sport management and business from Georgia Southern University and a master of divinity degree from The Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University. He is the former justice reform organizer at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. He also serves as the graduate fellow for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.
America is addicted to white supremacy
March 7, 2022
Susan K. Smith
Photo – 123rf.com
This country is addicted to its belief in and adherence to white supremacy. It is an addiction that displays as do all addictions: The desire for the power of white supremacy is part of the political circulatory system of this country, and because of that, the country cannot just declare that we are over it. America needs to be detoxed of its poisonous, destructive tumor.
There have been spates of time in our history where there has been a kind of remission. After the horrifically toxic years following Reconstruction, Black Americans, and women for that matter, were allowed into the political system.
But Black political and economic progress almost always has been followed by white backlash. It’s the addiction, made evident.
Once a person is addicted to a substance, his or her body needs it and their body is forever challenged and threatened by that need re-emerging. The blessing or evidence of healing is revelatory when the addicted person’s physiology and spirituality has risen above raw desire.
America’s addiction to white supremacy is no different. When it comes to white supremacy, American simply does not want to let it go. And so we have not.
This addiction to white supremacy exists in spite of the historical Jesus and his teachings. Some white supremacists have declaredthat Jesus’ mission really was to minister to and save the most wealthy, not those who suffer from political, economic and social oppression.
Historian Anthea Butler says:
White Christianity is a Christianity that is based on the following: Jesus is white. Jesus privileges white culture and white supremacy, and the political aspirations of whiteness over and against everything else. White Christianity assumes that everybody should be subsumed under whiteness in terms of culture and society.
White Christianity assumes that it does not have to look at poverty. We see this in the form of the so-called prosperity gospel, and that any blessing you get from God is because God favors you. If anybody else is out of favor, let’s say some poor kid in Northwest Philadelphia who doesn’t have enough to eat, well, that’s just too bad because they’re not blessed of God.
If you grew up in a home where the gospel was taught, this remaking of Jesus as the champion of white supremacy is puzzling, confusing and troubling. But in all truth, the only way to understand what is going on, and the role of Christianity in all of it, is to understand the ethos of white Christianity — a belief system that exists North, South, East and West.
What, then, do Christians who believe in the biblical Jesus, the Jesus of the gospel, do to effectively combat a nation that is addicted to white supremacy and that justifies its actions on their re-make of Jesus and Jesus’ purposes? How does one fight a group of people who have effectively de-defied the biblical Jesus and God, the parent of Jesus?
It is troubling, again, for those of us who internalized our Sunday school lessons, who resonated with the stories of Jesus loving all people, mingling with and touching and healing those who had been determined to be “the least of these.” The gospel message gave hope to the masses, which is necessary for the strength to survive oppression. With so many white Christians having rejected the biblical Jesus and replacing that figure with their own icon, how does the biblical Jesus survive — or in this time, does he?
Robert P. Jones, author of White Too Long, writes that America always has had a fascist undergirding, revealed during moments of white backlash toward Black progress. Are the believers in the biblical Jesus too silent? Too afraid?
It seems believers in the biblical Jesus ought to lose their fear and stand up, speak out and confront the distortion of Christianity we see playing out. We need to gird up and, like Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, face those who would bully believers in the gospel.
The Ukraine is in a war, surely, but this country is in a war as well with a nation that is addicted to its substance of choice — white supremacy. This country does not want to be healed of it; the goal is to inhale more fumes of power to maintain its high. America, just like any addict, may know that it is on a dangerous course and might die but has no power or desire to stop the ravaging of its soul.
It is time for believers in the biblical Jesus, the Jesus of the gospel, to stand up and be heard and seen.
Reprinted with permission by author.
Susan K. Smith is an ordained minister, activist and author. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, she is the director of clergy resource development for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Her latest book is With Liberty and Justice for Some: The Bible, the Constitution, and Racism in America.