Oppressed peoples are expected to remain silent and obedient in the face of subjugation while the establishment of ultra-rich oligarchs carries on its violent agenda.
Michelle Obama’s popular phrase, “When they go low, we go high,” is convenient advice for the ruling class, who perpetually squeezes us with its racial capitalism while condemning any resistance to the status quo of police suppression and mass incarceration they created. White moderates, liberals and conservatives alike urge us to engage in civil debate while they profit from barbaric policies that are anything but civil.
We must commit ourselves to the spirit of collective liberation if we one day hope to be freed from the shackles of this system that keeps us down. Our freedom is inherently connected and cannot be realized until we are ALL free.
How do you go on about your life, consumed with the fear of your family being fed into the deportation machine and exiled to a country destabilized by the nation you were forced to flee to? How can you quietly cast a vote every election cycle for the same two parties when the barrel of a fascist cop’s standard-issue Glock is pointed between your eyes through your car window? Why should you be enthusiastic about a Democrat in office when all they’ve done is carpet bomb your family members, then label YOU the terrorist for wearing a hijab? How can you concern yourself with the semantics of bought-out politicians when the disgustingly corrupt system they’ve created leaves you unable to buy groceries and medicine? Oppressors keep us poor and uneducated so that we continually feed into their never-ending cycle of hatred.
A professor once asked me why I was interested in taking a social justice course, highlighting the disconnect many well-intentioned white people have to our struggle. As people of color, we do not have the privilege of simply learning about oppression as an afterthought; it has been the experience of our entire lives.
We are the byproducts of settler colonialism and genocide perpetrated by European imperial superpowers. Whether you are a displaced native whose ancestors had Anglo genes raped into their bloodlines, a Middle Easterner whose land was invaded and decimated to secure Western power in your region, the descendant of Asian immigrants who built the U.S. railroad system then were demonized during WWII or a Black American who can’t trace their native lineage due to the evils of the transatlantic slave trade, our histories are littered with the effects of white supremacist terror regimes.
Assimilation is a false sense of security that relies on the notion that anglicization leads to acceptance, but it won’t. Your melanated skin will never win you the unequivocal support of white racists, no matter how white-washed and nationalistic your mentality becomes. We work tirelessly to advance, and every time it seems like we’re at the cusp, the bar shifts, and we’re right back where we started.
It’s much easier to ignore your oppression than to fight it.
We are taught to keep our heads down, ignore the constant barrage of racism and discrimination and focus on getting an education because “that’s how you create change.” However, you can’t change a system that’s working exactly how it’s designed to work, a system in which our people bear the load of essential labor for a minute fraction of the profit. In the process of waiting for your oppressors to spontaneously have a change of heart, you lose your cultural identity and yourself. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied!”
Resistance is in our blood, from Indigenous uprisings against colonialism and Westward Expansion to Nat Turner’s Rebellion against his white enslavers. The Black Power Movement sparked the Brown Power, Yellow Power and American Indian Movements, respectively. Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition united the Black Panthers, Young Lords and Young Patriots against inequitable housing and a common police oppressor. The Delano Grape Strikes were spearheaded by Filipino and Chicano farm workers and boosted by MLK. Black trans activists led the Stonewall Riots, further exemplifying the importance of intersectional solidarity.
Our existence within the confines of the settler colonial project of America is resistance in and of itself, but it is not enough to simply exist. We must recognize that without intersectional solidarity, collective liberation is impossible. How can we reasonably expect the Black community at large to rally behind migrant street vendors being assaulted if we aren’t standing for our Black relatives being murdered by police? Why would Asian Americans worry about missing and murdered Indigenous women if we aren’t standing against Asian hate? Solidarity goes both ways and can only start within yourself.
To kill an unarmed Black man is to kill my biological brother, my Muslim sister, my friend’s Pinoy grandmother and my Purépecha ancestors. Our liberation is inherently connected. The white community can only ignore us as long as we are divided amongst ourselves by xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and our own racism implanted in us by the oppressor. We must combat hatred with radical love and an unbreakable sense of community solidarity. We must strive to build an equitable world free from the shackles of racial capitalism and the evils it produces, but this cannot be done with moderacy or solely through the ballot. Join in the fight for collective liberation and let it radicalize you.
If the facade of peaceful complacency they offer us is the violence of the status quo, there is no peace at all, and we must be ready to resist it. Despite being one of the “richest countries in the world,” we have a record unemployment rate (6.8 million people) and over 653,000 homeless people, yet the CEOs of our corporate hellscape are reporting their highest earnings ever. Our society has normalized classism and extreme wealth inequality to the point that it is no longer viewed as violent, and the blame is shifted to the victims of it all. When the wealth of our nation is judged by the wealth of its richest and not by the quality of life of its poorest, it is no longer a judge of wealth; it’s a rich man’s pissing contest. The aristocratic oligarchs who rule this country fear nothing more than an organized mass coalition of the people fighting for their freedom because they know we are unstoppable when we stand united.
As the great Black Panther revolutionary martyr Fred Hampton said, “We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with Black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.”
The oppressor is not always a white man; often, it’s a Black or Brown capitalist who would happily step on the backs of their own people for a small share of the white man’s profit. Take money-hungry sellouts like Marco Rubio, Tim Scott or Clarence Thomas, for example; these self-serving leeches “use their [color] as a vessel for white supremacy,” as Marquis Govan said. They would rather assimilate than have the courage to face their oppressors.
We are at a breaking point in this country. The people are tired of choosing between the “lesser of two evils.” The Democrats first presented us with a senile genocide-enabling war criminal (President Joe Biden) and later replaced him with an equally fascist anti-immigrant cop (Kamala Harris). The Republicans put forward the most outwardly racist and bigoted candidate this country has ever seen (former President Donald Trump). Meanwhile, the right-wing Supreme Court ruled that the president cannot be tried for any crimes committed in an official capacity, effectively paving the way for a dictatorial regime. It’s a choice between sugar-coated or overt fascism. Liberals are nothing more than political leeches masquerading as social justice messiahs while they destroy communities of color with false promises and policies that harm us. We cannot continue to perpetuate a system designed to keep our people poor and downtrodden regardless of who holds power.
Oppressed peoples not only have a right to resistance but a responsibility to resist their oppression.
Read the writings and listen to the words of activists and revolutionaries like Angela Davis, Corky Gonzalez, Fred Hampton, MLK, Huey P. Newton and Malcolm X. Participate in direct action like protests, mutual aid and boycotts. Leave behind the duopoly of the two-party system by voting third party or uncommitted and contact your elected officials. Study grassroots movements, unlearn the biased and incomplete history we were taught in school and learn anti-colonial traditions from Indigenous teachers; decolonize your mind. If we are going to combat the status quo, we must educate, organize and mobilize the masses into collective action for the liberation of ALL.