Otis Redding sang:
“It’s been a long, long time coming But I know, but I know a change is gonna come.”
The bursting of fall color symbolizes past times’ forward thrust toward racial equity albeit Reconstruction, the rising of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, etc., the Civil rights era of the 1960s, or the George Floyd racial reckoning of 2020. Also, the coloring of America’s October becomes a figurative canopy of hope. They shine through, at their zenith in their brightness, but with backlash, they must unfortunately fall.
As those once colorful leaves of hope lay morphing to the ever-drying mulch of cold-hearted strivings to eliminate the hope of people of color and allies for racial justice, asserting that change may never come. This space is where the next battlefront assembles.
Listen very closely to explore together the possibilities and implications as America’s October flows into the shrinking daylight of November. The 2020 census chronicled the changing demography of America. A shrinking white Population was unveiled, which fell for the first time in the census history to a mere 58%. The non-white Some Other Race alone or in combination group (49.9 million) increased 129%, along with the continued growth of Latinx, Asian, and African American communities.
In the short term, the backlash will come fierce as some in the majority population will attempt the South African model for how a minority can set up permanent rule over a burgeoning majority. New voter suppression laws in Florida and Texas become the norm in this resurrected form of Apartheid/Segregation as 18 states move to make voting more difficult for communities of color.
“The restrictive laws from 2011 were enacted after the 2010 elections brought a significant shift in political control over statehouses — and as the country confronted backlash to the election of its first Black President. Today’s attacks on the vote come from similar sources: the racist voter fraud allegations behind the Big Lie and a desire to prevent future elections from achieving the historic turnout seen in 2020.”
Brennan Center for Justice Voting Laws Roundup: May 2021.
November Americans who yearn for the return of the trampled dead-leaf days of the 1950s, along with their extremist Reactionary, Insurrectionists, and White Supremacist allies, will do everything, including trample democracy itself to divide and conquer. This strategy is nothing new. It’s as old as America, i.e., the 1600’s Bacons Rebellion’s signature after effect created White as a legal definition, including certain privileges, later, House slave v field slave. Recently, the so-called Black and Brown divide conjured up against Barack Obama pushed the narrative that the “brown” Latinx Population would never vote for a black man for President.
The real challenge for America’s approaching November is to see if this soon-to-be majority BIPOC population and allies’ Innersectionallity holds as a positive force for unity and justice, as the scripture suggests.
“He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8 NKJV
“Change is gonna come” if we on all sides of the ethnic divide embrace one another in love and become resolute in purpose. Sometime between the early and the mid-2040s, the numbers will become too overwhelming and impossible to stop December from coming. December is the month in which we have chosen to celebrate the incarnation of our savior. The most peculiar of things happen on December 22nd; after the winter solstice, the days begin to get longer.
Soon flowers will explode into the passionate season of Resurrection. Colors will crest the highest peaks and descend into the deepest valleys. We don’t have to wait until the 2040s;
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.” MLK
By Kevin Robinson Founder, Editor/Publisher of Three-Fifths Magazine