Black people have a long history of working in coalition with people of other races and cultures. African explorers from multiple ancient kingdoms traveled across the Atlantic and communed with the people of the Americas hundreds of years before Columbus, the Vikings, or any others defined as white made that trip.
HISTORY OF COALITION WORK
Twenty-year-old Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois State Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, pulled off the miracle of miracles. He created a coalition that brought together Blacks, the Chicano Liberation Movement, and dirt-poor white hillbillies into one force. Together, they fought against the white, wealthy “powers that be” that sought to pit all those groups against each other.
That solidarity was so dangerous to the status quo that Hampton was brutally assassinated at the behest of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, working in tandem with Illinois law enforcement.
A young fiery minister, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., was chosen by the legendary Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman to oversee his San Francisco church while on sabbatical. Cleage sought to lead Thurman’s multicultural congregation to stand against the American government’s move to throw Japanese Americans into concentration camps during the 1940s.
Black and Brown people nationally worked in a coalition to fight for workers’ rights with Ceasar Chavez. Locally, a powerful tandem of young Black and Brown politicos fought together, bringing positive change for both groups, each supporting the other when members of their respective communities were wronged by the state (i.e. police, the courts, the Texas Legislature, Houston City Hall, etc.). The brutal murder of Joe Campos Torres was as much a rallying cry to stand against police brutality for Blacks in Houston as it was for Latinos.
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— Unapologetically Black, Positive & Unbothered (@KimWrites4U) November 12, 2024
In 1989, when Ida Delaney and Byron Gillum were brutally murdered by HPD just days apart, countless Latino activists stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Black activists seeking justice.
Even though there are countless other examples from Houston and beyond, Election 2024 signaled a cataclysmic shift in that paradigm, one that reveals that the tried-and-true tactic of “divide and conquer” still works wonders.
WE HAVE NO ALLIES
The vote breakdown that resulted in insurrection-leading Trump retaking the White House, inspired Bishop Talbert Swan to post on social media: “There is no Black/Brown coalition… Latinos voted on the side of white supremacy. We’re in this by ourselves.”
Swan was far from alone.
Even with White Women for Kamala, White Dudes for Kamala, and Republicans (white women and men) for Kamala, the white world voted like the white world always votes (for whiteness), inspiring Washington Informer journalist Anthony Tilghman to tweet the obvious: “A majority of white women and men expressed reluctance towards having another Black president in office, regardless of the individual’s qualifications.”
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Actor Wendell Pierce captured one of the impacts of the Election 2024 results, tweeting, “The Supreme Court will be changed for a generation… I’ll never see a moderate court again in my lifetime.”
Actress Yvette Nicole Brown spoke to those who Blacks thought were allies regarding how they will be impacted by a second Trump regime: “The rest of you are about to be shocked by how America treats you when it doesn’t care about you… The ‘find out’ phase has begun.”
One online sharer posted, “When we say Black people have no permanent allies… we mean Black people have no permanent allies.”
Political commentator Elie Mystal broke it down as follows: “Watching Latinos chase model minority status has never sat well with Black people, but this is a wound the Black community won’t soon forget.
In a word, what Black people are expressing, be they everyday, grassroots folk, celebrities, university scholars, and/or barber shop prophets, is the solidarity once expressed, forgotten, and hoped for again among marginalized groups is dead on arrival.
Mystal added, “One thing I do worry about, is that the ‘solidarity’ between ‘people of color’ has been significantly damaged. Black people have learned that all we have is each other.”
But moving into the future with clear eyes no longer deluded by promises of partnerships has awakened a call from Black people for another kind of coalition—a Black and Black one.
BLACK AND BLACK COALITION
The chorus grows daily, whether on social media, in personal, face-to-face conversations, via thought pieces from various Black media outlets, or from pulpits that have been unafraid for centuries to offer Black people a prophetic word of hard and uncomfortable truths—all we have is each other, and maybe that’s all we need.
Sure, it’d be nice if other groups of folk weren’t so blinded by anti-Blackness to recognize and respect our humanity. But hey; their loss. Historically, when we formed Black and Black coalitions, like the Blackfolk from all over the US and from across the diaspora gathered in Harlem, they produced a movement, a renaissance, that reverberates to this day.
When people with skin like burnt brass and hair like lamb’s wool from West, Central, and Southern Africa coalesced with their sisters and brothers from the Nile Valley, they gave the world religion, art, science, and civilization.
Black and Black coalitions moved the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; inspired the African freedom fires that blazed across the motherland from the 1960s to the 1980s; and brought apartheid South Africa-style to its knees.
Black and Black coalitions gave us multiple Black Wall Streets, every music genre in America, a Haiti free of colonizers and their system of slavery, and so much more.
And everything we birthed has been co-opted and stolen, used for the profits and benefits of others because we allowed our coalition to dissolve.
Prayerfully, with what we’ll soon be facing, the need for a more permanent Black and Black coalition will allow us to continue creating into perpetuity. But this time, we’ll be keeping our sh*t for ourselves. And when other folk come knocking, begging, demanding, or whatever, for the future brilliance we’ll give birth to, we’ll remind them of this moment when they turned their backs on Black children, Black women, Black men, Black youth, Black seniors, Black communities and Black humanity.
