African American lives must matter every single day, not just when politicians need our votes. During the Civil Rights era, we moved with strategy and purpose.
Today, we, as an African American community, have allowed ourselves to be divided, arguing and fighting when we should be working together and truly listening to one another.
Our words are loud, but our actions are too often silent. Once, places like barbershops, salons, churches, fraternities, and sororities were pillars of unity in our community. Now, they risk becoming battlegrounds where we polarize each other instead of building bridges across our differences.
The rhetoric we engage in is toxic to our progress. As a Black Republican, I work with Black Democrats to positively influence our communities.
If we are going to succeed in improving African American lives, we must treat each other with respect and allow for broader and independent ideas and approaches. What we do not need and what is self-defeating, are the personal negative attacks on one another and certainly on those who happened to disagree with popular or majority viewpoints. As a Black Republican, I am just as committed to the betterment of African Americans as anyone else. I just believe that many conservative policies are essential to this mission.
Yes, our communities are already burdened with enough crises that demand our immediate attention. African American children and teens are fourteen times more likely to die from gun violence than their White counterparts are.
Our children are falling behind in education—only thirteen out of one hundred Black 8th graders were proficient in math, and just fifteen out of one hundred were proficient in reading in 2020. We need leaders who will confront these challenges head-on.
We live in the greatest country in the world, yet our mindset remains shackled. We are too often trapped by entertainment and persuasion instead of adhering to facts and broader policy options.
As a community, we have been a force on the world stage—our influence in sports, entertainment, and intellectual contributions has been monumental, even when stolen.
However, our political impact has not kept pace. It’s time to reclaim the strategic thinking of our past, to focus on actionable solutions—not limit ourselves to narrow approaches and solutions. We must ensure African American lives matter every single day, not just when it is politically convenient. The only way to do that is to engage all powers and forces on behalf of our community.
