Regardless of the celebrity, so called wealth visibility and role models we think we see in entertainment or sports - outcomes for black and brown people in this country are worsening.
As I share during my workshops.....There were always a sliver (though very small) of the population that was allowed to be "free", and not subjected to enslavement - or the conditions of Jim Crow (as much as others were).
We need to understand that our collective oppression as black people is due to white racism which functions as a cultural trait/condition. This was not solved, nor eliminated with the Civil Rights Act of 1965 or any other pieces of legislation.
Our outcomes as a collective group are worsening in all aspects because it was never meant for the any of us to participate in the economic, political and social freedoms in this country; and only meant for whites to do so (and later, those who became adjacent to whiteness).
This culture is anti-black and that is the ultimate cultural condition that we have never examined for what it means in everything I named above. I continue to quote Dr. King in his proclamation that racism's ultimate logic is genocide. It is absolutely; and we need to organize and disrupt, quickly.
As Jim Crow has continued to permeate our culture, many are becoming attuned to the fact that it too, never left. If anything, it evolved into black people being treated with an ounce more of respect that what we were used to; white and non-black people simply smiling and being nicer - and the black community ultimately embracing and perpetuating a narrative that race relations had improved in this country. Unfortunately, most of us measured this from a very low barometer (i.e. brutality associated with enslavement and Jim Crow, comparisons to other brutal forms of oppression).
As Malcolm X stated so eloquently, repeatedly, we need our own - and we need it in a separate society and space where we can be liberated, rather than one where we remain relegated at the abyss of the culture.
Our outcomes by race are extremely concerning. Who's is paying attention?!