We knew for months that the Supreme Court as constituted in 2022 was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the judicial ruling that essentially gave agency to women to control whether they gave birth. Now, in an unprecedented leak from directly inside of the halls of the Supreme Court, a preliminary decision confirms what we knew and indeed, although known, the shock waves are nevertheless reverberating all over the country. But of course, as those who read my essays know, this essay is not just about Roe v. Wade or women’s rights. This essay is also about what no one, and I mean no one will say out loud – not the Media, not the pundits, not the politicians, and not people at the water coolers, hallways or desks surrounded by cubicles in corporate America.
Will this country repeat this latest attempt at deconstructing Reconstruction?
Roe v. Wade was undoubtedly the grapes on the vine and not the apples high on branches. This is not to say a woman’s right to abortion wasn’t as consistently attacked as rights for Black people in recent history. There is only the timing; 49 years of threat is considerably shorter than 145 years. Both, however, are nonetheless in real jeopardy, but Roe v. Wade is what they are willing and able to say out loud.
Yet, through the deafening sounds of outrage over the leak at the Supreme Court, there is that familiar, raucous silence permeating the air. Of all the other rights that are mentioned being at risk, there is absolutely no specific mention of the rights of Black people in this country, even as these have been consistently threatened since the Enslavement ended.
Here is what I am hearing:
“This is only the beginning… Next they will be going after contraception… This is a potential danger for the rights of all Americans… It won’t stop here…” Where will they go next, LGBTQ rights, other rights…”
These among other things which sound the Nation’s alarm and rightly so, indicate the Supreme Court is now captured by the same ideology which informed Adolf Hitler in his treatment of Jewish people and the other in Europe back in the 1930s. Think not? All you have to do is listen and read what is being said and written by people who identify as Republican, the political party of which the majority of the Supreme Court are a part.
I am sounding the alarm now, as I always do, whether it is seen as hyperbole or fear mongering, or any other nay say that can be produced when it comes to the rights of Black people in this country. If the upsurge in white supremacist violence, the extent of voter suppression, and the direct assault on the lives of Black people in this country by local and state police violence aren’t valid indicators of viable threats, then exactly what are? Why are these threats still being shrouded as though this same Supreme Court would never do what this country’s history has shown time and time again they have done in the past and could do in the future?
What is it about the rights of Black people that it cannot be mentioned directly but veiled behind the rights of other protected classes that are spoken of out loud? Why has it been for at least the last 50 years so taboo to attribute all of the white supremacist threat to every other group but the very ones the terror, violence and subjugation has been a consistent theme? Why even mention white supremacist if the threat isn’t about race?
This obvious metastasizing of the white supremacism in the Supreme Court is certainly genuine enough at this point in our history to at least realize the threat is no longer veiled but a possibility and will be a probability if the autocracy created by the Republicans succeed and democracy ends. But what in this so-called inclusive inclusivity of included protected classes of people in this country will it take for it to say “Black people, you in trouble, too” to be spoken as loudly as the right to an abortion or same sex marriage?
Well, I am saying it, and out loud. Someone has got to. Roe v. Wade is just the beginning, but
Black people, you in trouble, too.”
Comments