There Is Not Enough Time to be Frustrated

By Keith A. Owens

I know a lot of Black folks are frustrated with what is – and is not – going on in the country right now, and I get it. The feeling that President Joe Biden isn’t delivering on his promise that he would have our backs because he knew we had his when it mattered most. And now that it matters most for Black folks, there is a growing feeling that Joe has been MIA, and his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to become a member of the Supreme Court (if she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and that is hardly a guarantee) will not be enough to get the love back.

I understand the anger; we keep wanting to believe white people when they say they’ll look out for us once they get to the top spot, but it never seems to happen. Somehow we always wind up as the afterthought, and yet year after year, election after election, we keep coming back. 

So I do get why a lot of us are saying that they have had enough and that they are dropping out. No more voting, no more marching. Because why? Look at all that we did in the face of all those odds leading up to the 2020 election when so many of us stood in those lines for hours at a time, refusing to be told we didn’t matter. Who would have ever thought that after all that work, all that organizing, that we would be where we are right now? Too often it seems like no matter what we do, white folks win. So I do understand it, and I do sympathize with it. 

But we simply don’t have time for it. And as hard as that is for us to hear, it’s the truth. It would be great if the victories we achieved in 2020 by turning Trump out of office represented the Promised Land spoken of by Dr. King, and that we could rest. But the truth is that there is no such thing as a Promised Land, at least not down here on Earth. Down here on Earth, the struggle never, ever ends. And the day you stop struggling is the day you begin to lose everything you thought you won.

Right now most of the country’s attention  — and the world’s attention -– is focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and justifiably so. This is a serious issue that has the potential to radically alter world affairs, and not in a good way. So, yes it matters; yes we need to be paying attention to this; and yes President Biden was not only right person to take the lead on the global stage and get involved, he didn’t have much of a choice in his position.

But that doesn’t change the fact that millions of Black and other non-white people across the country are at risk of losing not only their vote but their voice because the terminal illness that is masquerading as the Republican Party has made erasing us from the landscape Priority #1. We already know about Black Lives Matter, right? Well, this is Operation Black Lives Will Never Matter Again If We Can Help It. Because far too many white people have seen the true power of the Black vote and are scared shitless. And when white folks get scared shitless, they go to work.

Because without that Black vote, America never would have had its first Black president. Without that Black vote Vice-President Joe Biden would never have become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States (courtesy of South Carolina’s powerful Rep. Jim Clyburn giving the nod), and he certainly would not have won the election. And more specifically, aside from Clyburn’s hugely significant endorsement, it was largely Black women who pushed Joe over the top, and he knows it. Which is why he chose Kamala Harris to be his Vice President. Because it was Black women on the ground who have been organizing like crazy for more than a decade, and it was organized Black women in Georgia (thank you, Stacey Abrams) who are the reason why Democrats there achieved the impossible by electing a Black man and a Jewish man to be their senators over two white bread southern crackers.

But then came January 6. And you know what happened because you saw it happen. And if we just sit back and stay home during the 2022 mid-term elections because we’re mad at Joe, then January 6 wins. White supremacy wins. Donald Trump (same thing as white supremacy) wins. And I know how many of us as Black people, especially the young, get tired of hearing about those of our ancestors who gave their lives for us to be able to vote. As if time and distance have made those blood-drenched sacrifices a mythical fairy tale that may or may not have happened once upon a time.

Which is what the January 6 crowd is counting on, because they specialize in re-writing and forgetting history. Because they know history is not on their side. And if we help them in their sinister endeavors then we are no better than accomplices in our own demise. But not only our own demise, because we’re talking about the demise of the entire country. Because if you don’t believe that nations as big as the United States can be targeted for destruction, take another look at what’s happening in Ukraine. Tomorrow is never promised. And yes, that’s true even if you do fight for it. But if you don’t fight then your failure is guaranteed.

And we cannot fail. We simply can’t.

A friend of mine tried to convince me that “We don’t have a dog in this fight.” But “this fight” is the fight for American democracy. And we live in America. Which means if America goes down, then we go down with it. And if the right-wing white Republicans win, then that Confederate flag they were waving on January 6 inside the Capitol building wins. And if the Confederate flag wins, exactly where do you think that leaves us?

We have every right to be mad. But we need to use that anger to our advantage. We need to fight.