It’s Time To Use Some Of That Black Power

Think of a playlist of all your recent favorite songs. Now think of all your recent favorite movies and TV shows. Now the news media you consume. Now your favorite celebrities or trendy fashion styles at the moment. Now remove all of the items on those lists that are not themselves black people, or have not been created by or significantly contributed to by black people. Either those lists just got a lot shorter — if they even still exist — or you actively avoid American popular culture.

Black people, we really do have a disproportionate voice in shaping American popular culture. Too many people worked too hard, for too long, for that to be the case and have us not realize and take advantage of it. Black voices are unavoidable in contemporary America. In this country, one would have to put in a considerable effort to raise a child who has not heard about some form of the black American experience.

We need to internalize, as black Americans, that our voice is heard now. And we should act like it. We should stop letting ourselves be infuriated by the apparent fact that the existing power structures can’t hear us and start speaking confidently with the knowledge that they will, and do, hear us. We should know, now, that if they do not act it is a matter of conscious choice that they will have to explain.

The frustration we experience is not that the issues facing black Americans are not known — it’s that there is a lackluster effort to solve any of them by the powers that be. The American or even world population cannot ignore us anymore even if they want to. Every social movement, social media campaign, and piece of political activism started by black people draws national and international attention. However, this lovely growth in the reach of black voices has not coincided with a similar (if any in some cases) change in the standards of living of black people.

It would be recklessly dismissive of me to not acknowledge that this current state we find ourselves in is not due to a lack of trying from within black communities. It is this persistent institutional inaction on solvable issues like the Flint water crisis, after the efforts of so many black people to bring attention to them, that justifies and inspires my current positions.

Do I claim to know the one-step solution to fixing all our issues? No — trust me, I would have done it already. What I do know is that black America is a socio-political force that needs to better organize itself to achieve its goals.

It is time we start to throw our political weight around on our own terms. Not on the terms of “who’s going to hurt us the least” as we often find ourselves doing at election time. No one is getting elected easily without us, and we should act like it.

No one can be popular in U.S. national politics without our social endorsement. That is power. Power we most certainly have not always had. We should lean into that power knowing that although we may not yet own much literal real estate in America, we own a huge square footage of the social fabric of this country — bigger than we realize — and we can and must leverage all we have of the latter to acquire the former.

For us here at Harvard this means that we should be confident in asking the University for what we want to see happen — whether that be the creation of a community space, the meaningful reconciliation of the legacy of slavery at this institution, or whatever else the community decides. Provided that we organize through some forum that can advocate for our desires, be it the Black Students Association or a newly created one for this purpose, the administration will hear it and either have to take action or publicly explain their inaction.

Black America, we have enough social capital in this country to start using it. And use it effectively we must if we are to see the changes we desire take form.

We already talk loud; now let’s talk smart.

Marcus B. Montague-Mfuni ’23, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Pennypacker Hall.