Black folks are resilient. It’s important to remember that during a time when, on the streets and online, many of us seem to be our wits’ end. President Donald Trump is attacking DEI. He is attacking Black History Month. It feels like the 47th president has declared war on our community.
As we celebrate Black History Month this year, it is important to remember from whence we have come. Our ancestors were brought to America in chains. They were forced to work from morning until dusk with no promise of liberation. Some lost heart because freedom tarried, but Juneteenth eventually arrived.
In the years after slavery, many tried to destroy our bodies and spirit. Our people endured lynchings and false imprisonment. Men who think themselves white unleashed massacres in places like Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Okla. that they later attempted to deny. And yet, we are still here.
America passed laws that marginalized us. Those who enacted them proclaimed that we would never sit at their lunch counters nor drink from their water fountains. They thought it was a privilege to be in the company of whiteness, but they did not know that it was them who was lucky to be in our presence.
They gave us scraps to eat, but we used it to make food with soul. We are the ones who were denied a music education, but still created jazz and the blues, a sound that they appreciated and then appropriated. Next, they took the instruments out of our classrooms, but it did not stop us from creating something called hip hop, a culture that changed the world. Chuck D was right when he said that rap music was the CNN of the ghetto, for we used it to tell a Black story over a bassline peppered by polyrhythmic beats.
The police tried (and are still trying) to kill us. Yet, we refuse to forget the names of Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Sonya Massey and the countless others who were unarmed, but executed by those who swore an oath to serve and protect.
Yes, we are under assault, but this is not new. It has always been that way. There has never been a second in this country when there was not something or someone trying to eradicate us. If not bodily, then spiritually.
So, remember this Black History Month how far we have come. Be encouraged by those who came before and remember the lessons our ancestors have taught us. We come from a people who overcame every obstacle America placed in our way, and we will overcome the threat posed by Donald J. Trump.