Michael Harriot Profile picture
May 27 34 tweets 8 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Let me explain why this narrative is stupid:

A thread.
First of all, basing your political strategy on aphorisms like "doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result" is dumb.

Maybe you should replace your heart medication with Honeycrisp apples & Chappelle specials.

After all:
You know what they say:

"Laughter is the best medicine." And "an apple a day keeps the doctor away."

Except, you know who doesn't say that?

Doctors
Medical experts
People who know things

In fact, one of the ways to achieve different results is by the same thing over and over.
Kobe became a better shooter by taking 1,000 jump shots a day
It's why marathoners run every day and why your math teacher made you do 40 problems even if you understand long division
When you go to the gym and lift weights, you won't get stronger...

UNLESS YOU DO IT EVERY DAY
Now, I don't subscribe to the idea that there was something called the "civil rights era." Black people always fought for equality.

And how did they do it?

By doing the same thing OVER AND OVER until they got different results.
Remember when civil rights activists marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge? Because people saw the the scenes of blood and violence, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.

Except, that's not how it happened.
The first time they marched, they didn't make it across. John Lewis got his skull cracked in and dozens were hospitalized.

So what did they do?

They did the EXACT SAME THING. To be fair, a famous guy named Martin Luther King Jr. led the 2nd march. No way they'd stop him Image
The same troopers came. This time, 2,000 plus people marched, including white people. And guess what happened?

They got the same results.

Well, that night, white supremacists killed one of the marchers, James Reeb.

Two weeks later, 25,000 people showed up to march.
They made it across because they did the same thing over and over until they got different results.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott would've failed if they expected results after skipping 1 bus ride. Gaining voting rights was the result of doing the same thing over & over
Now here's the important part.

No one thinks Ice Cube' was wrong for creating a Contract with Black America. It's not a bad idea. I actually read it, and so should you. It addresses policing, reparations & even the structure of media.

Here it is:

icecube.com/a-contract-wit…
It's really good except for 1 thing:

There's not a single new idea in it.

The problem with this whole approach is that Ice Cube– because of hubris or lack of scholarship–assumes that Black people haven't achieved these goals because they haven't come up with a concise plan.
Or maybe Cube assumes we haven't adequately communicated these demands to the power structure

But the reason these goals haven't been achieved is not bc no one thought to write them down on paper. White people don't know what Black people want!

And yes, I mean "white people"
Forget about the label of the party. The MAJORITY of white voters have always voted for the party that opposes Black advancement. Whether it is Democrat, Republican, Whig, Know-Nothings etc, there has always been a "white party."

But here's the question that always puzzled me:
How do white people know?

How do they ALWAYS know which anti-Black party to support? How did people who supported slavery know to vote Democrat? There were no telephones TVs or internet. How'd they know to switch to the GOP?

How did racists get so smart?

Are they telepathic?
Well, here's the answer.

There has always been a contract for Black America.

In 1932, to gain the support of Black voters, FDR asked his wife's friend Mary McLeod Bethune –probably the most famous Black woman in the US–what Black people wanted. What did she tell him?

Nothing
Even though she was smart and famous, instead of giving her opinion, she got a group of Black intellectuals who had been working on these specific issues and THEY put together some demands.

They were called the "Black Brain Trust" or the "Black Cabinet"

thegrio.com/2022/02/02/the…
The Black Cabinet created millions of jobs, desegregated factories that had gov't contracts, and came up with a novel idea called the "minimum wage." Of course, FDR was racist, so he didn't give them everything they wanted, but you know what they didn't do?
Stop trying.

FDR was kinda racist, so he wouldn't end Jim Crow, stop disenfranchising Black voters, or desegregate the army. But he signed Executive Order 8802, eliminating discrimination in the defense industry. Millions of Black people got causing the 2nd Great Migration Image
This eventually led to the desegregation of the army. And if you wonder why FDR wrote this order if he was so racist...

He didn't.

8802 was written by Rayford Logan, a member of the Black Cabinet who taught Black history at Howard

FDR signed it because he was scared.
Black activists had threatened FDR with a huge protest in DC if he didn't support equal rights. They didn't get everything he wanted, so what did those activists do 2 decades later?

They did the same thing over

Or as you know it: The March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom Image
THIS is when Black people started shifting to the Democratic Party.

And, because of Black people's specific demands, which started with the desegregation of the military, white voters who historically supported Democrats, shifted to the GOP Image
After the Voting Rights act & the Civil Rights Act, Black people were not satisfied. Now, if you learned whitewashed history, you might've been taught that the "Civil Rights Era" shifted to the Black Power era" as if Black people wanted a different kind of equality.
But in 1972, 10,000 Black leaders & activists met in Gary Ind. Coretta Scott King was there. Jesse Jackson was too. So was Bobby Seale & Louis Farrakhan & Betty Shabazz were there.

Why?

To write a Contract for Black America.

OK, it had a different name. Image
The NBPA's foundation built on the work of SNCC and MLK and the NAACP & the Panthers & the Black Cabinet

But you know who the people who WERE DOING THE WORK didn't listen to?

James Brown. Or Mahalia Jackson. Or anyone talmbout "why we keep doing the same thing over & over?"
Since then, other scholars and activists have built on that work. Economists like Sandy Darrity wrote a whole book on reparations. Tavis Smiley's "The Covenant" and Randall RObinson's "The Debt" moved the ball forward

ANd here's why this conversation bothers me so much.
When people like Ice Cube say "nothing has changed," I don't necessarily disagree. There's no such thing as "kinda free."

But when people say that we're "doing things over and over and expecting different results," what they are ultimately saying is that Black people are STUPID.
And there are only two reasons someone would say that:

1. Either they DON'T KNOW about the work Black people have done, in which case they shouldn't be listened to. If your plan isn't informed by the scholarship of your predecessors, why would anyone pay attention to it?
Every single thing in the contract for Black America is in the NBPA. When Ice Cube talks about Broadcast networks, including more Black content on public airwaves, that isn't a new idea. Even seemingly new ideas on environmental justice or Black farming have been written ImageImageImage
2. Maybe they think they're smarter than everyone else.

Maybe they're wiser than people with spilled blood and lynched loved ones and fractured skulls lives and educations and parents who read newspapers and marched and still had their skin ripped from the bones by fire hoses.
Instead of criticizing the white-controlled power structure and the white people who have known about these demands for years and organized their voting power around opposing the stuff that generations of Black people have demanded...

They direct their smoke at Black people.
I've never met a SINGLE serious Black person who thinks we should JUST vote

But there's only 1 thing stupider than believing the majority of white people in the history of America have historically voted against our interests because we just haven't told them what we want...
That the reason we haven't achieved social, political and economic equality is because...

"Black people are just doing it wrong."
But the craziest part of this faulty premise is that no one – not even the most loyal Black Democrats–believes that the Democratic Party is racism-free.

But, given the choice between drinking dirty water and poison, most people would choose not to die of thirst.
Of course, we could just not have a voice in politics at all and cede control of our political interests to those who have demonstrated disdain for us.

And THAT is the definition of insanity.

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More from @michaelharriot

May 19
Now that the final chapter in theGrio's 4-part series on SC's war against equal education is out, we can connect the dots to show why history is not a collection of things that happened...

History is why things ARE HAPPENING:

A thread

thegrio.com/2023/05/19/sou…
In Aug. 1669, 3 ships sailed for Charles Towne at Albermarle Point – the first pre-planned settlement in the English colonies.

Aboard the vessels was The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. This "unalterable form & rule of Government forever" included Article 110 Image
In 1739, a literate enslaved Kongolese warrior named Jemmy led the Stono Rebellion, causing SC to exercise "absolute power & authority."

Someone's reading this right now saying: "but slavery existed in every culture, so why was the Negro Act of 1740 different?"

Well... Image
Read 22 tweets
May 11
There was a shoplifting ring in my hometown who was known for dropping huge sums of money on designer clothes.

Everyone in town knew who they were, but they NEVER got caught.
Some high end stores would even let them shop freely, KNOWING they were thieves

Why?

A thread
See, the stores all hoped the thieves were there to spend, & not to steal. They essentially wanted to make money off the thieves. It might seem that the workers were in cahoots with the thieves, but here’s the thing:

A lot of people who work in high-end retail make commission
They make money when they sell merchandise but they don’t lose money when merchandise is stolen.

Essentially, they have an incentive to make money off thieves but no incentive to stop thieves from stealing.

Thieves know “the people in the store” are not the same as “the store”
Read 7 tweets
May 2
In many towns, especially small ones (not necessarily the South), “Second __ Church is usually the Black church BUT…

SOME Black churches are actually the 1st church of that denomination but named themselves “Second___” bc 2nd generally =“Black”

Here’s where it gets complicated
Many WHITE churches split over slavery & segregation. Some of the pro-slavery/segregation churches had other names originally & changes names TO “First __”

In fact, slavery or whether or not they would welcome Black congregants caused MORE church splits than theological issues
It’s even MORE complicated.

If you read the history of many older Black churches, you’ll see the phrase: “formerly named “Second___”

That’s because Black “Second” Black churches changed names after the Civil War to avoid the wrath of racial terrorists
Read 12 tweets
Apr 26
I’ve written about this before and it’s crazy how little this is talked about.

A (kinda short) thread

propublica.org/article/trains…
MOST towns are segregated historically segregated by race. But the boundaries aren’t arbitrary. In many places, actual physical barriers that were CONSTRUCTED to segregate places by race.
In some racial lines formed around already existing obstructions.
For instance, in the 1800s, towns sprang up around railroad stops. Most trains were noisy steam-powered engines that used coal. As the towns grew, it was a privilege to live downwind or in an area where buildings absorbed some of the sound & funneled the spot away from your home.
Read 21 tweets
Apr 26
Top 10 CRAZY stories about Harry Belafonte.
10. There was that time when he hopped on a plane with a bag stuffed with $70,000 and dodged the Klan to save the Mississippi Freedom Summer.

snccdigital.org/people/harry-b…
9. Then there was the fact that, because he was cool with the Black Power leaders & the nonviolent resistance advocates, his apartment was basically the spot where civil rights leaders settled their beefs.

aavw.org/special_featur…
Read 15 tweets
Apr 24
I can’t answer this question for Bill Maher but YOU CAN

A thread.
If you have a Facebook account go to the “Events” section, and search for “Stop the Violence” events in your area

If you aren’t on FB, you can do it on @eventbrite too.

Now, do the same for “Black Lives Matter” or “police brutality”

Shocking isn’t it?
It doesn’t matter where you live, I can almost GUARANTEE YOU that the effort to stop what white people call “Black on Black crime” outweighs the efforts to stop police brutality.

But we aren’t done yet.
Read 23 tweets

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