by Fred Logan
We are living in a very dangerous era. Mainstream America is plagued with its most bitter internal political conflicts since the American Civil War of the mid-1800s. Forces representing the mainstream left and right report, and analyze local, national, and world events from the view point of their respective interests.
The national Black community must rely on its own Black funded, self-reliant local, regional self-funded think tanks, roundtables, political action committees and other communications networks to analyze how local, national, and events around the world affect the interests of the Black community.
In your Black think tanks and roundtables discuss and debate how the mainstream from right to left continues to downplay the blatant role of White racism in the 2024 election. These pundits, with their surveys, and exit polls to back them up, tell us the major factor in the surprising vote for Trump—who had absolutely no coherent economic plan–was the economy, not White racism. The majority of White American voters voted White.
Many of these voters see Trump as the major champion of collective White power, wealth, privilege, and status, that is of White supremacy. And a whole lot of White people voted for Trump as the lesser-of-two-evils. These White folks voted for Trump most of all because they did not want to see a “Black nigger bitch” president in the White House. That’s hard. But! We must be real.
FRED LOGAN
“The Black community is not monolithic!” The mainstream (read White folks) and a whole bunch of Black folks tell us that around the clock. But the Black community is far more united against the rise of American right wing reaction, personified by Donald Trump, than the major European American ethnic groups. Internally, they are deeply divided over the prospects of an American fascist social order. “I was disappointed. But I was not surprised.” That’s what I am told over and over, about the 2024 US presidential election, by Black folks up and down the social ladder in Pittsburgh. And I am certain, without empirical data, this is true across the national Black community.
Kamala Harris was, by any ethical political measure, a far more qualified candidate than Trump. White America knows this. So, the tens and tens of millions of White folks who voted for Trump were not misled, as the apologists for Trump’s White voters argue.
Harris raised over $1 billion dollar, and over 70 million people voter for Harris. That is an historic accomplishment for a campaign of just 107 days. But Harris entered the race with four USA-strikes against her from Day One; her Black ancestry and her Asian ancestry, her marriage into a Jewish family, and she is female.
In the face of 400-plus years of White supremacy spoon fed to White America from birth to the grave by America’s major social, political and religious institutions, Harris ran a surprisingly good campaign.
Include this in your Black roundtable. US Vice President Kamala Harris, seated front-row-center second in command in the United States, backed the genocidal campaign in Gaza since October 7, 2023. One blatantly ignored paramount question we must demand answered is what was the quality of life for the Palestinian people in Gaza before Oct 7 2023, for example on Oct, 6.
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In addition, take this to your Black think tank. Black men are subjected to a double standard by mainstream defenders of the status quo. Barack Obama for example was in Pittsburgh last October. He sharply criticizing Black men for one thing or another. But coming from Obama this criticism has no credibility.
Obama ducked and dodged the Black community when he was in office. He said, and never rejected, that he could not see White people, or Black people, only Americans. But apparently, Barack Obama is no longer completely color blind. Now, he can at least see Black males for criticism.
Dr. Davarian I. Baldwin of Trinity College, CT led a November 22 public forum on the “2024 Presidential Election and the Future of Black American and the Nation.” He laid out some very important issues for discussion. For one, Dr. Baldwin said that adjusted for the difference in the overall numerical voter turnouts in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections Black male voter-turnout was about the same. But, Baldwin said, the percentage of the Black male vote for Trump was higher in 2024 because the overall voter turnout was lower. The forum was sponsored by the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) at Carnegie Mellon University.
The anomaly of Black males for Trump is not new. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former professional football player Hershel Walker and the late businessman Herman Cain, who committed foolicide in support of Trump, are several examples. And in 2024, add Mark Robinson who Trump initially endorsed for governor in North Carolina and then ran off and left hanging. Trump won in North Carolina. Robinson lost. And I very sure that a whole bunch of “them there” Black folks who Trump rented during his campaign will be ”as long gettin’ paid as (they was) gettin’ grown.”
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The economy, abortion, and civil liberties are some of the paramount issues before the entire United States. The Black community must take part in these struggles. But we must not place on the back burner the of the paramount role that White racism played in the 2024 election and it will continue to play in the foreseeable future in the United States of America.
Way back in 1964, right wing GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater ran the Black Vote out of the Republican Party. Goldwater lost the election. But in 1968 Richard Nixon ran on the White racist “Southern Strategy” and won. And every GOP president who has won the White House since then ran on the infamous Southern Strategy.
There is a whole lot to criticism about national Black electoral politics since the 1964Voting Rights Act. Even so, Black electoral politics has been one of the most progressive racial/ethnic blocs in mainstream US politics over the past sixty years.
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Trump’s MAGA “America First” foreign policy will accelerate the decline of American global dominance.” His trade wars will accelerate the creation of a BRICS currency for world trade to rival the US dollar as the global currency of international commerce. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, one of Trump’s alleged cronies, is a major player in the BRICS movement
Trump sitting in The Oval Office will accelerate Iran and North Korea’s projects to develop nuclear weapons, and increase the likelihood of other countries developing their nuclear deterrence with Donald J. Trump in possession of 5, 000 plus nuclear weapons.
In 2017, Trump came to the White House as an unknown in world affairs. Today, the political establishment around the world knows Donald Trump and will act accordingly.
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Put this on the agenda for your think tanks. Next year 2025, less than one month away, marks sixty years since the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. Today, the rise of the US Right is a major threat to African American people’s right to vote.
The Black community must ask has the “right to vote’” achieved what Black people expected during the long, hard, very dangerous and epic struggles to achieve the “Black Vote?”
A hard political power struggle is forecasted for local Democratic Party politics in 2025 and 2026. Pittsburgh’s first African American mayor Ed Gainey will run for reelection next year. In 2026, Summer Lee Alleghany County’s first US Congresswoman and first African American to hold this office will be up for reelection
The Black community must rely on its own communications networks, on itself, to assess how the dynamic issues cited above, and many, many others affect the. Black community.
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