RBG is Dead, White Supremacy Lives Another Day.

Rome is falling — still.

US Liberals from shore to shore have begun collective panic and mourning as news broke of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the SCOTUS. She was its senior liberal justice, often seen as a champion of women’s civil, and voting rights in her 27 years in the position. As one might expect, the Notorious RBG’s rigor mortis hadn’t even set in before the politicization of her death. So here we are, strategizing how to survive while being a non-white male in America — still.

Mitch McConnell, who I still contend is the greatest political obstructionist in history, has already issued a statement that they will take a senate vote to confirm any replacement Trump nominates, a direct contradiction to his refusal to allow a vote on President Obama’s end-of-term SCOTUS nominee Merrick Garland in 2016. McConnell rationalizes this as the voice of Americans who affirm the Republican Party majority in 2016’s presidential election and expansion of republican senate control in 2018.

For the deluded, this is an infuriating loyalty to party. The rest of us recognize that this is a loyalty to the preservation of white supremacy. It’s always been about loyalty to whiteness, as racism remains America’s favorite pastime.

America’s racism is so unconstrained that its most loyal gatekeepers could not contain themselves even in the middle of a deadly pandemic, e.g. the police-involved deaths of Rayshaurd Brooks and George Floyd. The indomitable loyalty to the protection of whiteness gives way to public outcry over looted institutions of capitalism while barely registering even an ambivalent “thoughts and prayers” response to the dead bodies of Black folks, Brown folks, LGBTQ nightclub attendees, and school-aged children.

I’ve always known we were broken as I’ve always lived my life being Black in America. I knew we were irretrievably broken when our political structures opposed gun regulations after Sandy Hook. There were no politicized bodies involved. No favorability for race, gender, class, or orientation that so often is avoided as a championed cause for the sake of “equal protection.” Just a couple dozen innocent babies whose lives had not even begun.

Conservative loyalty to anti-choice, pro-life politics haven’t cared enough to protect and preserve future generations beyond their effectual, fervent prayers to dismantle Roe v. Wade. Liberals have repeatedly rolled over when they should’ve held steady, hoping to trade our protections for future “joint party” cooperation — especially when it meant dismantling convenient norms and customs of the dying generations behind us. Lest we forget that the two front runners of the democratic nominees, Biden and Sanders, wrote and voted for the ‘94 Crime Bill that’s still got some of our loved ones stretched behind the wall.

It’s time to stop calling these acts of contradiction and heresy. There is no party loyalty on either side of the aisle when the fate of whiteness is at stake. Historic party dissenting votes like John McCain on Medicare and Mitt Romney on Trump’s impeachment are exceptions, not the rule, of moderate Republicans. By and large, they’ve voted to preserve marginalization of non-white bodies. They’re rare moments of conscience by moderates and shouldn’t be taken for more than that.

You cannot fix the system. It is not broken, it’s working as it was designed: to protect white supremacy. You cannot modify the system. It was never meant to operate beyond its intended purpose.

Voting is an imperfect system. It would be dishonest, for numerous reasons, to posit it as a master fix for the issues we’re navigating. Our current presidential choices are problematic prosecution or demonic dictatorship. No matter how you slice it, that’s what it boils down to this election. You may have personal qualms against voting for these choices, but one of these things is not like the other.

The short term memory of our electorate is going to be the literal death of us all. Elections have consequences — and we’re absolutely living them when the precarity of the freedom of millions hangs in the balance at the last drawn breath of one person.

Now, before you preach to Black folks about voting, consider the following:

We (Black women) ain’t preaching to ourselves. We know what to do. We’re trying to save the whole world by preaching to the rest of you — as usual. Problematic prosecution will absolutely never be worse than the demonic dictatorship that is emergent within this current fascist regime, so it’s absolute critical to elect a #BidenHarris2020 ticket.

Revolutionary activists have told us time and again that we can, and should, destroy the system as it is — and many of us responded with more apathetic passivity. We assumed this was just another election and committed to allowing the chips to fall as they may. Still, like Angela Davis, I contend that resistance is a lot easier with a centrist, liberal leaning administration than the alternative. And ain’t not nam one of us is more revolutionary than thee Angela Davis, so this ain’t the year for protest votes.

This ain’t the time to capitulate to respectability, you can’t accomplish your way out of the crosshairs of the system. You cannot Black excellence your way around their loyalty to the preservation of whiteness. It was always designed to destroy you. No resistance of this system is too small. From sharing posts to amplifying the voices and movements of physical resistance, to prayers and rituals of protection for our foot soldiers.

By the grace of Gods and the spirit of those before us, I believe we were designed with the power to destroy and dismantle oppression. Now is the time to dig deep and fight harder than ever before. If we choose again to ignore the consequences of our elections, our children’s children’s children may not survive the impact.

0