The looming approval of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination comes barely a week after he raged and yelled and cried in front of a Senate committee, half of whom were drawing hearts with “B.K.” and their initials in it when his accuser Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford presented her case. The FBI, who has enough resources find all the lost socks in the world, presented the findings of an investigation where neither accuser nor many others interested in offering information were interviewed. For a representative government, this seems like a good time to ask who they really represent.
Maya Angelou said, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.” That is good advice in another week when women some women people who care about sexual assault victims are pleading to be heard and have their experience recognized. Kavanaugh supporters have spent the last weeks dragging out every reason to minimize, dismiss and silence sexual assault victims. Thousands of victims shared raw powerful stories of their own experiences to try to help senators and their supporters understand.
Stop. Stop sharing your feelings and your deepest pain with the people who care more about power than people. Stop trying to help those whose spirits are set on sleeping, illiterate in their own humanity. No carefully crafted explanation you give will make them change their beliefs. They are not seeking to understand. They do not want your help. They want to be insulated by their hate and ignorance. More than anything, they want to rule the world, at any cost. They demand to keep living in their nostalgic America–the America of Big Dan’s and sexual abuse in the back rooms of churches, days when a woman who wanted a voice just needed to be reminded of her place.
While it is true and important that the #MeToo movement has brought important conversations about rape culture to a wider audience, the senators who will vote to support Blackout Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination are uninterested in cultural transformation. The question raised by an enraged constituency–would you confirm a bellicose liar (31 lies and counting) who also is a potential sex offender–is answered with a simple yea. The end game for them is power, a court that will lean conservative for years to come.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation won’t take years to pay off, though. While lots of people are thinking the rush is on to beat the midterms, there is another, bigger fish on the line. The Supreme Court will hear a case on double jeopardy that has potentially massive consequences for Trump and the Mueller investigation according to the Congressional Research Service:
The Gamble case may nevertheless have significant collateral legal effects … A win for Gamble could also indirectly strengthen the President’s pardon power, by precluding a state from prosecuting an already-pardoned defendant who has gone to trial on an overlapping offense.
And there it is: save the supreme court nominee, save Trump’s world. Looks like Trump and Kavanaugh have more than sexual assault allegations in common. Their conservative leaning on this case have them in la-la-love and rushing to get to the spicy part where Trump helps tank the FBI investigation and Kavanaugh ensures Trump’s pardon powers.
In these days of change, we rightfully resist. We demand that previously marginalized voices be heard. We work to create space for new ways of being that foreground compassion, humanity, and empathy. We think we can appeal to the humanity in others–if we just say the right thing, show them our wounds, beg them to remember we are family they will finally see the light and usher in utopia with us. We all want the same thing: to be safe, to be free, to have a healthy family that can thrive, and the resources we need in the pursuit of happiness.
But we have a blind spot. We forget that there are people who are wholly willing to kill for safety, to enslave others to create their own freedom. There are people invested in keeping the narrow definition of family in order to center their traditions. There are whole systems set up to funnel resources from the many to the few. This is not a drill–this is really who they are and no amount of tragic personal narrative will stop them from working against everything we believe in. We can’t reason with them; we can only remove them.
The Black Lives Matter movement has gone through these growing pains. While many massive peaceful protests did focus attention and grow the movement it was only the beginning. After Trayvone Martin’s killer walked free, and video after video showed cops kill people with no subsequent consequences, after die-ins and marches and the occupation of Ferguson, there was no come to Jesus moment when America suddenly recognized the humanity of black people and called for widespread change. You can’t win systemic transformation by appealing to people who are invested financially and ideologically in your oppression.
The tactics of the BLM movement didn’t stop at protests alone. Our liberation was never going to be born the love child of white supremacy and our demands for justice. Instead of begging our oppressors, we are building ourselves. In fact, there is a solid case to make that we are in the midst of an unprecedented black renaissance. Our activists are moving from the streets to the halls of power, becoming elected officials with the ability to make change Our artists are creating a vision of the new world in film and TV, illuminating our path. Millions of black people are doing what they can with what they have where they are: starting businesses, growing community, getting educated. Most importantly, black people are talking to each other, working to create unity and help our sleeping brothers and sisters wake up. This is how we get free.
Whatever the result of Kavanaugh’s nomination, the past few weeks have shown us who the right is. Conservative men AND women have dismissed sexual assault as just a teenage rite of passage or a privilege of prep school boys who later rule the world. They do not care about women’s equality. They do not care about holding men accountable. They will not change their mind even when they find your case compelling.
It’s time to stop begging and keep building. Lingering on your anger over Kavanaugh will not help. Instead, take stock of what you can do and do it. Vote, create, build and talk. Talk to the people that matter, and work with the willing. Work to get the fence sitters to come to the right side of history. Remind them there are many more of us than there are of them. Numbers are on our side and the stakes are sky high. Tell them as you tell yourself: none of us is free until all of us are free. Stay woke.
stand today as a measuring stick to place blackness in America against. To paraphrase MLK himself, it’s 50 years later and the negro is still not free. Now I can hear you shouting “Black President !” from here, and I’ve seen Obama hanging around, so I know lots has changed. Even with all the change, the needle for black people–and poor people– that the civil rights activists fought so hard to move seems to point to the same old numbers.
In 1963 there was 
forward 50 years. We have handfuls of big blacks filling up our screens, and incidentally draining our pockets. Beyonce and Jay Z are the reigning king and queen of a kingdom full of rappers, runners and ratchet weave wearers. We even have some young white ladies who I refuse to name here doing their best to play out their own tilted image of what it is to be black.
Susan X Jane 