MAKE HISTORY NOW.

Dismantle White Supremacy

We are horrified, enraged, and saddened about the coldblooded murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. We pray for George Floyd’s memory, his family, his loved ones, his friends, his neighbors, his neighborhood, and his community. We demand justice for his murder and stand with all victims of state-sponsored violence and police brutality. Say his name: George Floyd.

This depraved act of deadly violence is just one more atrocity committed against Black people through an ingrained 400-year-old system of white supremacy in America. George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are only three of the most recent fatal victims of this sick, sinful culture. Tragically, there are many more. The courageous efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement are ensuring that their names will not be forgotten.

Floyd’s killing ignited a positive global social reform pandemic that has reached and surpassed its tipping point. Despite the vicious, brutal treatment of peaceful marchers by police as well as attempts to discredit and mislabel them, it continues to grow and spread. A massive awakening of consciousness by white people is occurring, a global evolutionary shift that will benefit all of humanity. That tens of thousands of peaceful marchers of all races chanting “Black Lives Matter” could assemble throughout America and across the world would have been inconceivable to my grandfather, a Black veteran of World War I who never learned to read nor write, and fled Monroe, Louisiana with his family in the late 1910s to escape a surge of lynching there.

Police violence against people of color and racism by elected officials are merely symptoms of a deeper systemic disease that has thoroughly infected every institution and aspect of American society: white supremacy. It’s time for our white friends to acknowledge that you profit from this system with comforts and privileges that you enjoy daily, even if you were not there at the slave auctions, cross burnings, hanging trees, color barriers, red-linings, and deadly police encounters. Centuries of white silence, inattentiveness, passivity, acceptance, and inaction make every white person complicit. Through the eyes of white people, James Baldwin noted, it was a simple equation. “We knew we were not at the bottom because the Negro was there.” This guarantee of white supremacy was given to every white child.

But while white supremacy affects Black people, it is a white person’s disease. White people devised, created, perpetuated, guarded, and allowed the systems that have sustained it. Therefore, it is white people’s obligation to dismantle it. You must do so actively, because America cannot evolve unless its white people evolve. And to be clear, having Black friends, Black employees, or even a Black spouse does not exempt you. White supremacy is America’s original sin, and like the fall of Adam and Eve, that sin has passed on to every subsequent generation, undiminished and undeterred. The question for white people is, do you want to be redeemed? Ask yourselves, what am I willing to do to atone? What comforts and privileges built on racism am I willing to sacrifice? And what do white people have to gain? You get to reclaim your own humanity. The time has come to act. The world is watching. Expressions of empathy or solidarity toward people of color are empty without your concrete action to undo this system. Toward that end, we are calling for the following:

  1. Justice for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and other victims
  2. Criminal justice reforms that eliminate police violence and increase accountability
  3. Accountability by elected officials, including disavowal of white supremacy
  4. Appropriate reparations for the effects of slavery and systemic discrimination
  5. Education reforms to include mandatory courses and curricula in Black history of all kinds, across all disciplines, for all citizens, of all races, at all levels

The existence of the Black Fives Foundation itself is in response to systemic racism, because there shouldn’t have been a Black Fives Era of early basketball in the first place. Why was the sport racially segregated for generations before the NBA signed its first African American players in 1950? How and why was this history ignored and forgotten? Within the context of the current awakening, answering these questions at a deeper level, with the dismantling of white supremacy in mind, now seems natural. We were founded to counter historical neglect of this topic with details about hundreds of African American basketball teams and pioneers who collectively advanced the sport and paved the way for the NBA and its stars today.

Our original effort was meant primarily for the benefit of people of color, because that negligence in and of itself was one of the effects of institutionalized racism. But white people need this deeper understanding of Black history more than ever. Our mission to research, preserve, promote, teach, and honor this history always had an underlying message to inspire, celebrate, and uplift. That’s the reason for our trademarked slogan, Make History Now. It’s our call to everyone we can reach to make this history relevant while also using it to inspire action, not someday but today, not anytime but now.

So, our call to white people is this: Look in the mirror. Pledge to make a difference. You might lose some friends. But you’ll find yourself. Evolve. Our country needs you. The world needs you. Make History Now.

Claude Johnson
Founder & Executive Director
The Black Fives Foundation

Make History Now

 

 
(Updated: 07/08/2020)