OPINION: Will Black Americans stand still or be taken back to Jim Crow?

Often in teaching or conversing with adolescents about slavery and the Jim Crow era, we hear them say things such as, “I would not have taken that kind of treatment.” Similarly, just months ago, we heard Black people, including political leaders, declare “we are not going back to those oppressive days.”

Those attitudes and expressions come to mind, and the determination behind them and certainly welcome, as we witness what is happening at the various levels of government and through the different branches of government, particularly in the case of Mississippi and several other “red states”!

In Mississippi, for example, the governor is a conservative Republican, more than two-thirds of both houses of the legislature are Republicans and the majority of the Supreme Court justices were elected by conservative majorities. This set of realities has meant several things. (1) The state has passed major legislation widening the health and economic disparities between Black and white people that have diminished the rights that had been available to Black people. (2) Many Black legislators have often felt helpless to pass positive, progressive legislation and to block the passage of negative legislation. (3) Many Black citizens have come to feel it is futile to continue voting for political candidates when nothing seems to change. (4) Even some activists or organizers have grown frustrated and weary regarding next steps, and “retired” from the struggle.

In the face of such phenomena, Black people in Mississippi and other such areas can be pushed back to the Jim Crow conditions, if not to slavery itself. With reduced tax revenue, many services upon which working class people have come to depend, including public education, health care, affordable housing, transportation, and protection, will be gone or ridiculously diminished. Furthermore, the ability to affect change through voting or protesting will have been stymied through what the legislature has passed, the governor has approved, and the court has upheld, as they act in concert. Together this is equivalent to being pushed back to that bygone era.

When moving to the federal level, we find the same problem. The president is not only a conservative Republican, but a white nationalist authoritarian, to boot. Because the president is so dictatorial, he has proposed measures penalizing Black and working class people and brought the Republicans who are the majority in both houses, in passing these measures. As an alternative, when the president has desired something or was unsure of Congress’ appetite regarding a particular policy, he has issued executive orders to create laws and depended upon the Supreme Court to uphold them.

Through these procedures, the federal administration has reduced funding and staff that had been used to provide health, education, housing, and other services and resources to Black and other working-class people. Again, however, because of restrictions to their human rights, the federal government is limiting citizens’ ability to affect change or avoid the oppressive conditions through voting or protesting.

The almost sure-fire manner in which the Supreme Court has backed the president’s actions has left many Democratic congressional leaders and governors at a loss as to how best to respond to the effort to take the country back to the Jim Crow days. Being frozen into doing nothing will certainly allow us to be pushed back into Jim Crow conditions.

We must, nevertheless, take heart and learn from history what has been done in other times and places, support and encourage our leaders, and promote things that can be done through personal, neighborhood, and community efforts to counteract the problem. These must be done in addition to stepping up the effort to expand the franchise and the manner and areas of protesting in which we engage, since all tools are weapons and none should be cast aside as useless.

Up to now, Jackson has enjoyed some shelter by being a “blue city.” That has enabled it to preserve many human rights lost in other municipalities and shielded its residents from some of the negatives stemming from conservative Republican administrations. Hopefully that condition will remain in Jackson and other Mississippi municipalities as has been the case in other “blue cities” around the country.

The idea nation-wide is to never surrender to oppression; to always retain the attitude that accepting second-hand treatment; to find and create ways to struggle to preserve and advance democracy; and to resist as one who is fully human and fully alive.