Black Voices Matter
Sign on my front door, modified with sticky note. Taken 2021
As part of the recent critique of Critical Race Theory, I’ve heard people asserting that systemic racism doesn’t exist. It’s well documented that it does exist - we’ve seen explicit examples over and over again - so I’ve been quite puzzled about how it can still be ignored and denied. We have legislated, legalized, and advanced systemic racism for hundreds of years in the U.S. In fact, Juneteenth recognizes the liberation of Black folks from legalized enslavement in Texas, and symbolically in the U.S. We still see the legacies of past policies today, as well as the impact of systemic racism in our current practices. For example, redlining of the past continues to compound against the wealth accumulation of Black and brown folks, while white families continue to benefit from the wealth inflation redlining created for their parents and grandparents. We also continue to see the dangerous and lethal consequences of police responding with extreme force against Black people driving, walking, hanging out in their back yards, etc. A friend of mine recently said that her Black husband has been accosted by the police six times in his lifetime. That’s a lot of times - six too many.
So, if Black folks keep telling us that systemic racism exists, and they give us concrete, specific ways in which their lives have been impacted by systemic racism, then why are they facing this current wave of fury against their assertions? Why don’t people believe Black people when they tell us about their experiences? I’ve been sitting with these questions all spring. And here’s where I’ve landed - It’s white supremacy. Nothing new, but white supremacy. Black Voices Matter, but for some reason, white supremacy tells us that Black experiences are not the American experience, that somehow their experience is not valid. If a Black person says they experience systemic racism, the right-wing media explains it away. They sugarcoat the experience and retell it from a white experience. If systemic racism doesn’t exist for white people in the U.S., they argue, then it must not exist for Black people. That’s gaslighting, racist, and more importantly - it’s wrong! We can’t keep saying that systemic racism doesn’t exist if we don’t actually listen to Black people telling us otherwise. We must listen to and believe the experiences of Black people. Because Black voices matter.