Carolina QuotesWe've only had multiracial democracy in this country for fewer than 60 years, meaning we've only had democracy in the US for fewer than 60 years. In places where Black people outnumbered white, we had violent minority rule. If you don't understand this, what are you reporting? We can keep pretending that economic anxiety is leading millions of Americans to be willing to subvert democracy but that is a willful blindness and an abdication of our duty to report the truth. We can keep pretending that our institutions will hold, but that defies history. Fears about eroding democracy are not abstract for the millions of Americans who will lose rights and suffer under a white Christian nationalist regime that does not believe a multiracial citizenry should be sharing power of governing.
Nikole Hannah-Jones Connected to the Carolinas
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Oct 24, 2022 on Twitter
- year
- 2022
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“We've only had multiracial democracy in this country for few…” Nikole Hannah-Jones. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-6DA13ED251. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/6da13ed251
More from Nikole Hannah-Jones
This has been a fundamental problem with news institutions, now and in the past. They attempt to cover racism and inequality without understanding it themselves.
We must remember that it was not merely the Enlightenment ideas, some reckoning amongst white abolitionists, that brought the end to the system that had enriched colonial powers, but that abolition was propelled by constant revolt that forced colonial powers to realize, as scholar Mary Reckford wrote, it would remain “more expensive and dangerous to maintain the old system than to abolish it.” Black people were actors in their own freedom. Obscuring and marginalizing stories of Black resistance serves to justify the hypocrisy of colonial Europe and the United States by insinuating that had slavery been so bad, surely, African peoples would have fought harder against it. These are lies of omission that in the absence of truth warp our collective memory.
If we are truly a great nation, the truth cannot destroy us.