Dr. Brandon A. A. J. Davis, Contributing Columnist
Ebenezer AME Church, 3rd Episcopal District
The emerging danger within American society is a narrative that forbids our progression as we deal with the same issues constantly before us. Amira Baraka best coined “the changing same,” which identifies how America’s struggle for human equality is not a discourse over new and emerging principles. These struggles are relative to the plight of being black. It confronts the narrative of justice that continually pushes the line of racial responsibility further away from who is responsible.
Systematic racism, racial violence, gun violence, racial disparities in black health, education, economic injustice, and financial reparations are too short of a list that accurately outlines the daily struggle of being black and brown in America. Each day brings a new level of understanding relevant to our struggle, which leads back to the system of white oppression and privilege. Yet, ironically when injustice and violence fall at their door, white Americans continue to find excuses to justify its happening or, too often, simply mislabel the problem as mental illness.
The reality of the changing same begs to differ whether or not our struggles are the changing same or the fighting same. It is the latter; we are fighting the same issues for change, yet our opponents are new, younger, creative, and look like us in some regards, like Herschel Walker. To further perpetuate the narrative of black people always assuming issues of race, rich white republicans put up unqualified and issue-specific-uneducated candidates who, along with their white benefactors, label our issues of injustice as baseless fodder.
During the candidacy of then-Senator Barack Obama, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Alvester Wright, Jr., was demonized for his biblical and theological stance against racism and violence in America. Sermons were taken out of context and used as sound bites to discredit his intellectual brilliance and maim his life’s work and commitment to African Americans. Then Senator Obama, senseless and baselessly, threw his pastor under the bus by articulating that Dr. Wright’s views of America were “profoundly distorted.” Furthermore, he did not speak for the black church, nor did his views and sermons readily identify with others regarding what they thought the black church represented. One sound bite that gained national coverage was Dr. Wright saying, “America’s chickens have come home to roost.” With skillful sociological and psychological precision, Dr. Wright pointed out American militarism, which created worldwide havoc through capitalism, war, and bloodshed domestically and internationally. As a result, America is now receiving the recompense of being a world’s stage bully.
Mass shootings in supermarkets, schools, churches, doctor’s offices, and other public spaces have been a weekly succession of events from Buffalo, Uvalde, California, to Oklahoma. Gun violence, racism, sexism, and hatred are some of the most significant issues that plague the minds of caring individuals – yet still, when broken down and compartmentalize, they remain the root causes for social change in America. When you listen to Dr. Wright in full and not through sound bites or from four pages in Michelle Obama’s 2018 book – which further trampled upon his legacy as a prophetic voice in the black church, when you contextually and objectively listen to him and place his view of America parallel to our current state of affairs, the only thing that comes to mind is that Dr. Wright is owed an apology. And that apology should come from former President Barak and First Lady Michelle Obama!
The roosting chickens of America’s complicity in violence, its lust for capitalism, its bloodthirstiness for guns, its legislative control over women’s bodies, and its unchecked hatred towards African Americans and people of color are an accurate assessment of who and what America is. Our present-day issues have not changed; our reasons for protesting police brutality, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the fight for human equality remain the same. The supporters of government-sanctioned racism, violence, and injustice take their orders from the tweets of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and others who paint themselves as victims as their rights are under siege by those who are anti-American.
Dr. Jeremiah Wright was right then, and he is without question right today. Voices like Dr. Wright speak to America’s national consciousness and its approaching social collapse as it is every day tearing itself apart. Americans chicken has roosted, and it is saying Dr. Wright is due an apology.
