Dr. Lenore Daniels, PhD

Neither Marx nor King could begin to analyze the pursuit of freedom and equality without discussing the wrongs of an economic system that represents the direct opposition of democracy (freedom and equality). However, both thinkers considered ways to disable cruel and unjust policies. Both Marx and King prioritized freedom on Earth rather than eternity in the elsewhere. For both thinkers, capitalism was not a given.

Nike can’t substitute for religion and provide our lives with meaning. A Mercedes neither. No more than flat screen televisions or Harvard degrees.

Religion takes away our mental capacity to soar on our own to feel, to think critically about how we as human beings want to live on this planet, among other species, without destroying and causing unnecessary suffering to ourselves.

Donald Trump’s election to the presidency enables haters within the borders and “beyond” because no sovereign nation in Africa or Asia, in the Caribbeans or South America, is really beyond the watchful gaze of white supremacy. No sovereign land in worlds consisting of majority black or Brown, Indigenous or Asian is really safe from an unleashing of fear and hatred.

so much mean-spirited thinking, ubiquitous, encircles black people. To not know. To refuse to know. A form of thinking no less that isn’t freedom—but instead deliberate and cruel.

Trump recognizes himself as under attack now, so he’ll make himself a martyr for under the lights and before the cameras. Show time!

The legacy of enslavement for African Americans is resistance rather than a sense of entitlement. Racial supremacy. Economic dominance. For the enslaved black, freedom meant NOT being somebody’s property. Not placed in chains. Not dehumanized. Domesticated. But free to be.

if you say to Americans today, this is history, not just black history, but American history, the only history of America worth it’s salt, the hate pours forth. You become a pariah.

What is slavery if not the history of America’s brutal subjugation of Africans and African Americans? But our subjugation didn’t end in 1865. The backlash against freed blacks and Reconstruction resulted in the violent renunciation of our humanity again with legalized segregation and the systemic oppression meant to track and stifle our rights as human beings as well as our mobility in the world.