America Is Getting What It Deserves: Reactive responses don’t yield new results

Written By: Tahyira Savanna

This land is your land, this land is my land…. unless a racist from Anytown U.S.A. thinks otherwise. Are we going to sit here and pretend that white folks didn’t try to take away legal votes from Black people in Georgia? Modus operandi resulting in an insurrection against the Senators on the House floor, set to make those same Black voices…I mean votes… legitimized. If there was ever a terrorist group in America, it is these new-age anarchists’. An anarchist does not believe in governmental authority and generally disregards its overreaching power as it relates to an individual’s right. They are the biggest threat to our national security and we could even argue internationally as well, as many of the Qanon believers have high-security clearances — like military level clearance, plus training. Some of them are U.S. representatives, ran their campaigns on Qanon beliefs and keywords — and still won. Are you afraid yet?

So when we start discussing arms and the right to carry automatic assault riffles, do you envision the Black kids coming to your suburban neighbor still? Would they be wrong to do it? This is not meant to encourage more violence in America but to ask you to think about what fear really means in our country. Trump et al ran his reelection campaign against the Black family essentially sending so many dog whistles a lot of us now speak in woof woof.

As most GOP ticket headers do — they can’t just go based on merits because, well… they looked and they haven’t found any. They got a gift in 2020 with the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by government agencies which sparked INTERNATIONAL outrage during a Global pandemic. They were killed by cops. The eight-minute video of Floyd’s death still haunts its non-Black viewers up until now. Many white Americans were slapped with a hard dose of “are they kidding me” when they heard Floyd yell out for his momma. They took to the streets as well, more of them than folks that look like me. So I was really shocked and appalled to see the burning buildings in Louisville. Not really appalled but definitely shocked. I was shocked to see a 16-year-old white girl yelling in front of the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, NY about how she’s tired of living in a racist country and she doesn’t care if they shoot her too. There was also a white kid in Kenosha who killed a protester with a long-range rifle. They’re ticketing him as a “hero”. America reacts like a racist.

“This isn’t your Grandparent’s GOP party,” is a term I heard countless times during election season and it was tossed around by folks on Twitter who were Maga supporters; turned to stop the steal supporters; turned insurrectionists, it is hard to buy the whole no one saw this coming nonsense when it is all on camera. In the night leading up to Election Day, we heard stories about poll-workers safety. We heard rumors about militias going to “make sure” that everything was being handled properly. We saw some of them on-site at polling locations during the early voting period in states like Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. We heard Trump tell us directly that “it won’t be a change in power, but a continuation.” As a storyteller, I’m always looking at ways to incorporate foreshadowing elements into the work but this takes the entire cake and recipe. America waits to react. In the weeks after the final electoral votes named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the winner of the election, we heard stories about State Secretaries and their safety. We saw the dude from Georgia have a complete mental breakdown because of threats sent to his staff, his family, and neighbors. These people are doing their jobs. That’s like if you working at a Starbucks as a barista and you get thrown hot coffee on your because Starbucks changed a flavor. I mean this is America, people were running into glass doors two seasons ago because they were offended by mask rules, but I digress. There was even an entire plot uncovered by the FBI to kidnap the Governor of Michigan. At the same time, Trump refused to publicly denounce known white supremacy groups such as the Proud Boys, as well as refusing to tone down the rhetoric on his social media feeds. As I write this, I’m watching the DC police chiefs give testimony on the Hill regarding the events on January 6th. Why did this happen? “Amid threat, more than just an email is needed” is the headline shown by CNN. Americans on duty deliberately let this happen. A reminder that the label “cop” is an acronym for Citizens on Patrol. Back in June 2020, BLM protesters were attacked for peacefully protesting outside of the White House, it has since then been renamed Black Lives Matter plaza. Do you want to give a plaza to the insurrectionists too?

January 6th could be the day white privilege in America met its impending fate. A full-on display of white hate, white anger, and the freedom to behave illegally. But who knows what troubles lie ahead. As a Black 30 something woman in America who studied Criminal Justice I already knew the country was heading down this road, you could’ve seen it from Charlottesville, you could have seen it during the Guantanamo Bay holding sites when we arrested Muslims as terrorists, and you could see it during the 1940s when America sat quietly by as Hitler murdered religious folks because…they were religious. We react. How many times does history have to repeat in real-time before we change the way we live? It is a current and active threat in a country whose demographic is changing to include a lot more than just White males and females, and their kids. Asian Americans are facing unprecedented amounts of victim accounts of hate crimes in major cities like New York and Los Angeles. That’s not by accident. Calling it a China virus created that ideology. We deserve to lose everything, which is happening in real life as reflected by the Stock Market. In a capitalist corporation, this is how we grade our country, by how much money we have. Does anyone want to trade their 401K? Working for the corporations didn’t protect 500,000 Americans from death. Some of us believe voting is our only way forward, and as I write this, more voter suppression laws are being signed into effect in Georgia and South Carolina. Let’s do a slight recap. They did nothing to stop fake news from spreading through the internet during the 2016 election cycle. They did nothing when Trump lied publicly along with his staff countless times. They did nothing when he was Impeached the first time for interfering with another election. They did nothing when reports of hydroxychloroquine use were listed as the cause of death in Trump towns during the pandemic in 2020. They did nothing when Trump supporters began the Stop the Steal campaign against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They did nothing when Republican-led states pleaded with the executive branch to tell these people to chill out. They did NOTHING to protect the US Capitol on January 6th.

If we continue to be reactive we will never be World-leading, that dear friends require innovation, not fear. If this land is going to be for all of us then white America needs to be un-privileged and that is why so many of them voted for Trump. Out of fear of people like Kamala Harris and a white guy named Joe. Maybe a change is on the horizon but for today, we stand in reaction.

Written by: Tahyira Savanna