“The US Needs a Reckoning, Not a Reconciliation”: An Interview with Sundiata Cha-Jua

There are different societal undercurrents at play in the United States today. On the one hand, there is the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other, the growing radicalism of white-supremacist groups, who recently invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Nihan Duran interviewed Sundiata Cha-Jua, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois on how to understand the fault lines of American society and politics given the concurrently rising movements: BLM activism and the white-supremacism.

َQHow do you evaluate the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., following the global reactions to the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020? Have the Black struggles for justice and equality re-surfaced as a political force in the 21st century?

The COINTELPRO destruction of the radical stream of the Black Power movement in the late 1970s produced a prolonged period of relative quietude in the Black Liberation Movement (BLM). Around 2010, the movement began to resurge. Activists introduced several tactical innovations, such as the initiation of the #hastag for organizing in response to the killing and murder of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin. Cell phone footage of Grant’s killing, for example, went viral on the then four-year-old YouTube platform, as it was watched by 500,000 people in four days.

Q. What impact did such a reach-out have on the acceleration of the movement?

The national response to the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 accelerated the use of online petitions as an innovative movement organizing tactic. Martin’s murder also gave rise to #hashtag BlackLivesMatter, which has also made an impact as activists used another relatively new social media format, Twitter to mobilize protests. Consequently, new organizations sprung up and older groups were reenergized. New youth-led and oriented groups such as the Dream Defenders, the former Million Hoodies Movements (now Brighter Days for Justice), and the Black Youth Project (BYP-100) emerged.

Since Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson in 2014, a new phase of struggle in the Black Liberation movement focused on police killing and criminal justice has swept the U.S. and, in the summer of 2020, surged beyond the borders of the U.S.

Q. You mentioned that there is a “shift in emphasis.” What does that “shift” indicate when the long tradition of Black liberation movements in the U.S. is considered.

#Black Lives Matter’s slogan “we are not your grandparent’s revolution” links it to a divisive strategy more reminiscent of the Yippies, “don’t trust anyone over 30,” than the intergenerational legacy of Black liberation movement organizing. That is not to deny Frantz Fanon’s observation that “each generation must discover its mission and either fulfill or betray it.”

The point is that older more experienced activists have always played a mentoring role in the Black Liberation movement. The cutting edge of the 1960s movements, specifically the organizations, strategic visions, and political analyses still relevant come from the nationalistic Black Power wave, not the liberal integrationist Civil Rights movement.

So, the infantile divisive generational politics are doubly irresponsible, because it erases the Black Power movement. M4BL has reversed that error. It has adopted the symbolism of the Black Power movement- the fist-and centered its programmatic initiatives on a five-year plan under the slogan “Black Power Rising 2024!”

Q. What does white people’s involvement in America in the BLM movement indicate?

The involvement of such a large number of Euro-Americans evidences the Black Liberation movement’s ability to convince a broad sector of the U.S. public that systemic racism accurately describes American society. However, white engagement would be better utilized if they built solidarity, created a constituency inside white communities and civic associations that practiced the politics of the Black Panther Party’s rainbow coalition. I am also quite mindful of A. Phillip Randolph’s 1940 admonishment that “where you get your money you also get your ideas and control. We need white ‘allies’ to organize support for Black self-determination, and a pro-labor, pro-socialist movement” in white neighborhoods and social spaces.

Q. Do you think that Black politics can find its way to move from merely a critical progressive to mainstream American politics?

Why not? Since the 1830s, the Black Liberation movement has demonstrated its ability to intrude into and shape U.S. politics. The Abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movement are examples of moments in which the Black Liberation movement seized the center stage and focused the eyes of the empire on us. C.L.R. James powerfully made this argument more than 70 years ago in the “Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Question” (1948).

Since the Ferguson Uprising and particularly this past summer, Black people reaffirmed their capacity to boldly reshape both social movement and electoral politics in the U.S. Perhaps, the best example of the power of the Black Liberation to remake U.S. politics is the rise of the African American reparations movement. Before the end of the 20th century, the Black reparations movement was virtually unknown to the U.S. public.

In the last six years, the African American reparations movement has gone from a fringe movement in U.S. politics to a strategy endorsed by all leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, though largely through some universal policy scheme. Nonetheless, there have now been two congressional hearings and several cities have passed reparations resolutions and few, notably Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville, North Carolina have enacted legislation.

Q. You mean that politically as well, the U.S. has come to acknowledge the persistent predicament of its Black people?

Definitely. Millions of people in 200 cities, domestic and abroad took to the streets to protest the police murder of Black men, women, and children. The Black Liberation movement has forced American society to admit the existence of systemic racism, which I prefer to call racial oppression and to “commit” to its elimination from U.S. institutional life in colleges and universities, corporations, and government agencies.

Q. Despite growing awareness, what is the possibility or limitations of a “post-racial” America? Especially today, when we witness the white-supremacist undercurrent getting more and more visible both on the social and political scenery.

Sorry but the “post-racial” idea is ridiculous and odious. It is rooted in a colorblind racial ideology that denies structural racial oppression. It insidiously contrasts the success of the meager Black elite to the assumed failures of the working-class Black majority. That the election of Barack Obama sparked the rise of right-wing social movements such as the Tea Party and that his administration was followed by Trumpist fascism that used racist appeals and policies to pursue the neoliberal agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization, all exposing that the postracial ideal is fallacious.

Q. What about the U.S. Capitol siege on January 6 then? What did make this possible? Was Donald Trump the chief responsible for this or only a symptom of undercurrents?

Ultimately, we can trace the rise of contemporary fascism that culminated in the January 6 assault of the U.S. Capitol building to the economic crisis caused by the transition to a financialized global racial capitalism, but it would be a grave error to underestimate the central role played by anti-Black racial oppression. The dislocations and alienation caused by the new structure of capital accumulation is the foundational cause but Donald Trump’s rhetoric, policy agenda, and explicit xenophobic and racist appeals mobilized white supremacists and nationalists. He recruited and weaponized them into an anti-democratic battering ram against egalitarian public policies.

Q. What to expect now, after the U.S. Capital Siege? How do you think this will impact the future of U.S. domestic politics?

The Trump regime rolled the rock back and unleashed fascist hordes who now control one of the two corporate parties. The fascists are here to stay. They are likely to elect dozens, if not scores of new congresspersons and continue to control more than a score of state governments.