It is both possible that Black people
believe in conspiracy theories, and that Black
people have centuries of firsthand experience
with real-life conspiracies waged against
them. But in the end, can we really call them
conspiracy theories when the receipts for actual conspiracies
are plentiful and readily available?
A study from the Pew
Research Center found that majorities of Black
people believe in ‘racial conspiracy
theories,’ specifically that American
institutions are designed to hold them back.
Pew defines “racial conspiracy theories” as
“the suspicions that Black adults might have
about the actions of U.S. institutions based
on their personal and collective historical
experiences with racial discrimination.”
(After the study was published, Pew later added an
editor’s note to its report stating that the
study is under review, and using the term
“racial conspiracy theories” was “not the best
choice” to make. “Black Americans’ doubts
about the fairness of U.S. institutions are
accompanied by suspicion. How Black Americans
think those institutions impact their ability
to thrive is worthy of study, and that’s the
purpose of this survey,” the Pew editor said.)
According to Pew, Black people believe U.S. criminal
justice, economic and political systems are
conspiring against them. For example, a
majority of Black adults say U.S. prisons
(74%), the courts (70%), the political system
(67%), the economic system (65%), news media
(52%) and health care system (51%) are
designed to hinder the progress of Black
people.
The study says that most Black people are aware of
specific racial conspiracy theories — such as
the idea that more Black people are
incarcerated because prisons want to profit
from Black bodies — and believe they are true.
There is a long list of reasons why Black America should
be critical and suspicious of American
institutions and believe the system is set up
against them. Where do we begin, and do you
have the time?
The trans-Atlantic slave trade, the reason many of us are
here, is a prime example. The slave trade was
most certainly a conspiracy by white elites to
get paid through mass kidnap, trafficking,
rape, torture and forced labor.
In South Carolina — where over 40%
of enslaved Africans entered America through the port of
Charleston, and where my family has remained
for over 300 years — the state department of
education has eliminated the teaching of Advanced
Placement African American Studies in high school. This move follows a
trend across the country by white nationalists
to criminalize or otherwise ban Black
knowledge, history and books. Hide the
evidence of the crime, and you silence the
calls for justice and reparations or at least
make the best effort to shut it down.
White supremacy and institutional racism
have always involved regulating what and
whether Black people can read and controlling
the voting rights of Black people. That’s a
conspiracy. Nearly 60 years since the passage
of the Civil Rights Act, voting
rights for Black people are under assault
by red states, the Supreme Court and white
nationalist lawmakers in the so-called land of
the free. Voter suppression,
disenfranchisement and purging of voter rolls
are the name of the game, as Congress refused
to pass The
John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation that would have restored
the protections of the Voting Rights Act.
The Tuskegee
SyphilisStudy — a conspiracy and not a
conspiracy theory by the federal government to
withhold treatment to hundreds of Black men
with syphilis and allow them to suffer in pain
and even die — is an example of a long history
of unethical medical testing on the Black
community. Medical racism is real, from the gynecological
experiments performed on enslaved Black women
without anesthesia, to the present-day
conspiracy that makes Black families suffer
from the highest maternal
mortality and infant
mortality rates in America.
And consider the conspiracy to steal Black land and
hoodwink and bamboozle the Black farmers, with
the loss of countless acres through corporate
trickery, fraudulent contracts, the law and
government policies, Klan violence and
lynching. Black communities such as Greenwood
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Rosewood, Florida,
were targets of white mobs and Ku Klux Klan
violence but also the white establishment that
wanted to undermine and steal Black wealth.
The two remaining survivors of the 1921
Tulsa Race Massacre will not receive reparations
because the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed
their lawsuit and sided with the city of
Tulsa, which was allegedly complicit in the
massacre that killed hundreds. Now that’s
institutional racism. Black people in
Greenwood were victims of aerial bombings, as
were the victims of the 1985
MOVE bombing in West Philadelphia that killed
five children and six adults and burned down
60 homes.
Years of redlining and policies to racially segregate
Black people and deny them mortgages and devalue
their homes are a conspiracy that continues
today. And let us not forget the ongoing
government conspiracy to shortchange
land-grant HBCUs by billions
of dollars compared to their white college
counterparts over 150 years.
Remember, these racial disparities in education are not
conspiracy theories because the conspiracy is
real. And these crucial Black institutions and
their students are struggling in the process.
Black Americans do not need a report to tell
them this.
The Pew study reminds me of Sam
Forster, the white author who went undercover
posing as a Black man for his book, “Seven
Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern
America.” Wearing an afro wig and essentially
stepping out in blackface to find out what
it’s like to be melanated folk — the same
thing was done over 60 years ago with John
Howard Griffin’s memoir, “Black
Like Me” — Forster
could have saved himself some time and
talked to Black people, maybe read some
books and articles about racism written by
Black authors, scholars, thinkers and
practitioners.
In other words, tell us you don’t know
any Black people — or anything about Black people — without telling us
you don’t know any Black people. Black America
does not need reporting from a white author
disguised as a brother to understand the toll
that white supremacy has taken on Black
people. After all, we can tell you ourselves.
Ultimately, white America does not need this
information because they create and maintain
the systems of racial oppression and
exploitation that drive us into the ground and
out of our minds — and the systems are
operating exactly as designed.
“To be a Negro in this country and to be
relatively conscious is to be in a state of
rage almost, almost all of the time — and in
one’s work,” James
Baldwin said. “And part of the rage is
this: It isn’t only what is happening to you.
But it’s what’s happening all around you and
all of the time in the face of the most
extraordinary and criminal indifference,
indifference of most white people in this
country, and their ignorance.”
And when Black people march and protest
to change the institutions that oppress them —
as they did during the George Floyd summer of
2020 — the response is kneeling Congress members in kente
stoles and empty
corporate promises, followed by a return to the 1950s
racial hierarchy, the defunding
of DEI programs, no venture
capital for Black women-owned businesses
and more
police.
While Pew has published many outstanding reports, no one
asked for a study to inform us that Black
Americans believe in racial conspiracy
theories that undermine us, much less a report
that insults our intelligence and suggests
it’s all in our heads and we’re making up all
this stuff.
This commentary is also posted on
TheGrio.com.
