Harmreureuner

I support the Ice Cube's “Contract with Black America.” 

This contract features a preface written by Darrick Hamilton, who is among the most respected and well known Black economists in the US and rightfully calls for “a blueprint to achieve racial and economic justice” through polices that promote wealth creation, home ownership, small businesses criminal justice reform, and voting rights. 

I would support parts of the “Contract”  that are reflected in what the Trump administration has called its “Platinum Plan” with election time appeals to Black voters if and only if that 'platinum plan' is refined (like here, here, here,   also see here, here [other side view], here, here, here, here, here, here for more of my views on blacks being Republicans/DJT supporters as reflected by others)

If Republicans really want to lure black voters to their side, maybe the first thing that Republicans should do is allow blacks to vote /s

Ice Cube’s seeming alliance with Donald Trump’s anti-Black political empire set Black Twitter ablaze with Trump mania syndrome and confusion; 

Ice Cube was right to say that he is willing to work with people on both sides of the aisle. “I’m not playing no more of these political games, we’re not part of a team … so I’m going to whoever’s in power and I’m going to speak to them about our problems, specifically,” 

Ice Cube said, explaining that “our” is referring to Black Americans. “I’m not going in there talking about minorities, I’m not going in there talking about people of color or diversity or none of that stuff. I’m going there for Black Americans, the ones who are descendants of slaves.”

Though Ice Cube denounced Trump in 2016, Ice Cube’s more recent foray into politics has been shaped by statements that regardless of political party, he wants change just like I do and he is correct for thinking that. 

However, the unease and unfrilliness with this approach is that it implies somehow that for Black Americans, both major parties are or could be interchangeable. 

This is *moral false equivalency (or maybe it is 'moral equivalency /s) behind such narratives is untrue (lordy where's muh truth? all of the truth!)

For as flawed as the modern-day Democratic Party is on race issues it is, for better and worse, the party of idpol and intersectionality in contrast to the modern day GOP. The contemporary Republican Party has become, purposefully in a few quarters, a refuge for the architects of racial division, scapegoating, and resentment/all encompassing loathing that has evolved past the dog whistles of the Nixon era into the megaphone/bullhorn utilized by Donald Trump and his acolytes.  

 Certainly, many Black men are likely to be taken aback by Ice Cube’s receptiveness to Trump and 50 Cent’s weird endorsement not endorsement of him. But Ice Cube’s apparent inability to recognize or acknowledge Black women in his rush to be the arbiter of change appears to be a sort of deliberate blindness, a blindness farther complicated by the fact that he is clearly not the first prominent Black male political or celebrity to make an effort to negotiate or work with anti black politicians – or those politicians who were largely viewed as supporting anti black policies. It’s an approach with deep historic roots.

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam covertly met with representatives of the KKK and forged a public rapprochement with other white supremacists around their mutual distaste, for different reasons, of racial integration.

These efforts proved largely fruitless and, however well intentioned, morally compromised efforts at achieving racial justice.

Black Power activist and Black Studies academic Maulana Karenga was pilloried for going to a private summit in the late 1960s with the then Governor of California. Ronald Reagan in the wake of MLK Jr's assassination.

The leader of Congress of Racial Equality Floyd McKissick went from marching by Stokely Carmichael's side and also with MLK Jr in Mississippi to on the record supporting Richard Nixon, whose broken promise to support an all-Black “Soul City” in the state of North Carolina is a lamentable exemplar of why negotiating with groups hostile to the agenda of some of the Black community (especially ones like Stokely and Maulana) and hostile to the negating anti blackness truly achieves.

(And before you say it has been only Black men who have fallen victim to this,also note: during the Great Depression era Black women liberal nationalists who were champions Liberian emigration tried to get support from Democrat Theodore Bilbo, the notorious seg whitenat Senator from Mississippi)

Who gets played by a ‘both sides’ approach

For sure, Ice Cube lending his support to a more racially just US is vital and noteworthy. The “Contract With Black America” contains a bunch of important policy recommendations that, if realized, is helpful to millions of poc to supposedly have a more good access point to wealth, economic justice, a bigger say in matters, and less trouble from the police.

But in addition to his questionable “both sides”-ing of Democratic Party and the Republican Party on the platform of how to improve on racial issues, Ice Cube’s broader “blueprint” falls short of being as radical as the radical policy recommendations that were pushed by A Movement for Black Lives. 

The most startling portion of the US's woke reckoning has been the black power of Black women organizers, idealogue and leaders in griping for maybe the most woke and Marxist ideas ever thought up. BLM, who are led mainly by ERFs (radlib exclusionary Black feminists) and queer feminists, in the eyes of many wokies offers the nation a more expansive vision of 'liberation' than the type promoted by Ice Cube (but I ultimately agree with this Teen Vogue article as it proposes an even better solution than Ice Cube's solution).

BLM’s decentralized leadership has agitated Black activists, organizers and their common person allies to amplify the stories of the most marginalized sectors of the Black community: LGBTQIA+, the mentally and emotionally ill; the non-able-bodied; HIV positive and poor/homeless and and the illegal migrants (who are in need of becoming legal)

They demand the experiences of those that the Trump junta would tend to prefer to mitigate, depreciate or ignore.

Black men’s pain, which Ice Cube’s scowling image from his classic first two albums – “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted and Death Certificate” –so reflected in a base way, is actual as reflected in their higher rates of imprisonment, punishment and lower life span. 

Black women’s pain is also potent (since why else would they are incarcerated at higher rates than white women?), relatively high rates of poverty and depressing levels of income along with lower rates of wealth.

Black men have a pivotal role to play in this racial/woke (ymmv) reckoning. This requires straight Black men embracing a different kind of leadership model, a model that draws on the panoramic nature of the Black freedom struggle.

The broader movement was never primarily led by Black men. Black feminists, from Ida B. Wells’ anti-black violence crusade up to the founders of the Black Hammer Organization/ New Black Panther Party etc, have enlarged the reach of Liberal democracy. 

Black queer activists, from Bayard Rustin and Audre Lorde to James Baldwin and Barbara Smith have expanded the boundaries of Blackness in ways that challenged anti blackness, the type of racism that Tim Scott complains about and is against and racial patriarchy – as well as homo- and transphobia within the Black community.

Of course, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. remain in that pantheon, but they stand alongside Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, Lorraine Hansberry, Angela Davis and so many others. Contemporary Black women thinkers, writers and activists such as Patrisse Cullors, Brittney Cooper, Keeanga Yamahta-Taylor, Michelle Alexander, Keisha N. Blain, Imani Perry, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Martha Jones and Roxane Gay have produced the kind of ideas for helping reduce suffering for blacks and to help blacks grow within society  and historic work that Cube – and all Americans – would benefit from reading if for no other reason to give more views on this topic.

Collectively these works offer us dynamic, challenging and thought-provoking visions of a utopic and liberal future guided by the type of deep humility, personal sincerity and political integrity that would never align with Donald Trump’s agenda.

notes

*moral  (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here for more insight on morality)