January 31, 2019
Our placid workday routine was shattered Tuesday afternoon by the stunning news of the homophobic and racist attack on Jussie Smollett. Each detail of the assault was horrifying – the slurs hurled by the perpetrators, the bleach they poured on him, and most chillingly, their attempt to lynch him, tying a rope around his neck, (Source: “‘Empire’ star Jussie Smollett attacked in possible hate crime,” by Sandra Gonzalez, CNN.com, 1/30/19). Once the news broke, social media feeds of Black queer men and Black women were filled with images of the warm multi-talented actor with the hashtag, #JusticeforJussie. Other folks were eerily silent, or worse still, took to trolling social media to doubt the veracity of Smollett’s account. Even in the face of something as blatant as this, the press was maddeningly circumspect, calling it a “possible hate crime.” If an attempted lynching while shouting racial slurs doesn’t constitute a hate crime, nothing does and words have no meaning.
The truth is, whether people want to acknowledge it or not, not only are hate crimes up dramatically since Trump was elected, lynchings and noose attacks specifically are newly rampant, an intentional echo of the 100 year history of lynching as a violent enforcement tool for the forces of white supremacy (Source: “Assault on ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett serves as a stark reminder that American lynching and noose attacks are still prevalent,” by Elizabeth Weise, USAToday.com, 1/31/19).Then, as now, the purpose of lynching , was not merely to punish prominent or successful Black people for the crime of achievement, but to warn the rest of us away from being outspoken or ambitious, lest we suffer the same fate.
In 2019, there is an entire political party fiercely dedicated to reviving a rigid racial caste system through both legal and extra-legal means. Those who doubt it need look no further than at Mitch McConnell’s reaction to the package of reforms introduced by the Democrats contained in H.R.1. The bill includes measures to limit the influence of money in politics, combat voter suppression and end partisan gerrymandering, (Source: “H.R.1 Would Fix and Protect Democracy in the U.S.,” by Paul Smith, U.S.News and World Report, 1/29/19).
It is telling that Mitch McConnell reacted so negatively. Last week, he decried the bill in a Washington Post op-ed. This week, McConnell made a cynical speech on the Senate floor, calling the proposal for Election Day to become a federal holiday a Democratic “power grab,” (Source: “Mitch McConnell: making Election Day a federal holiday is a Democratic “power grab,” by Tara Golshan, Vox.com, 1/30/19).
As the uptick in lynching and intransigent Republican voter suppression make abundantly clear, those who support this President will be satisfied with nothing less than a return to the Dred Scott era status quo, where Black people have no rights “which the white man [is] bound to respect. In the face of this, the last thing we need is for a group of Black men who call themselves “activists” to spend their time attacking Black women, or to tolerate “jokes” about violently “correcting” an LGBT child and not expecting that to lead to violence against Black LGBTQ adults. If we are to have any hope of defeating these retrograde forces, we need to value and fight for the rights and dignity of Black LGBTQ people and Black women. We are NOT fighting to replace a white patriarchy with a Black one. When we say “Black Lives Matter,” we had better mean all of them.
#JusticeforJussie