We’re Not Going Back to the Way Things Were. Black America Needs a Vision for the Future

ContrabandCamp spoke with experts, thought leaders, activists and scholars for their ideas on a 10-point plan for the future of Black America.

(Photo by Envato)

Speaking at Howard University’s Opening Convocation on Sept. 19, Sherrilyn Ifill, the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard Law School, implored new students to remake democracy and give birth to a new America. “We can choose to focus on the passing away of the world we have known, or we can get to work on the new world that will come quickly in its wake,” said Ifill, also the founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy. “Our faith and our belief in our future as a people on these shores has never been dictated by what has been going on in that world. We have always been able to create our vision in this world, even when all the signs suggested that it could not be possible.”

Ifill emphasized that the real framers of the Constitution remade America after the Civil War, adding equal rights to the Constitution with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. And she believes we should view ourselves as the founders of the new iteration of a multiracial democracy.

For all the talk about resisting and eliminating this latest version of homegrown Jim Crow fascism, there is no going back to the “good old days” that never really existed. Rather, let’s hatch a plan for the future we want.

Black people have been here before. Post-Civil War Reconstruction-era policies, including public education, were the vision of Black America. On Oct. 15, 1966, the Black Panther Party drafted a 10-Point Program that called for Black self-determination; full employment, reparations and ending economic exploitation; housing, education and free health care; ending war and exemption from military service; ending police brutality, freedom for all prisoners and fair trials.

Today, like six decades ago, we need a plan. America is on the precipice, mired in crises stacked on top of crises, all manufactured by unwell and evil white men. The federal government shutdown threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions through lost SNAP benefits, rising unemployment and skyrocketing health care costs. ICE agents are exercising “Gestapo tactics,” as Malcolm X would say, snatching up, beating up and violating the human rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. This, as the White House and the corporations are consolidating power, and the Supreme Court and Congress are rolling over for the dictator-in-chief. Something is dying—the American empire, U.S. capitalism, the myth of freedom, justice and multiracial democracy—but people must be prepared for what is about to be born. Although people may be too preoccupied to think beyond tomorrow, an unsustainable present means that they must plan for the years ahead and shape the future they want. ContrabandCamp spoke with a number of experts, thought leaders, activists and scholars for their ideas on a future plan for Black America.