As a Black man in 2024, I can confidently say that our people have never been more divided. Throughout centuries of oppression, our oppressors have managed to make us kill and hate our brothers and sisters. It makes you question just how we went from unifying for movements like the Montgomery Boycott or the March on Washington to killing each other over the colors we wear. 

On December 6th, 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified, which brought the end of slavery as we know it. However, what if I told you that slavery has never ended? From then until now, Black Americans have been living in a trap that the American government has been carefully modifying for centuries.

“Today’s lynching is a felony charge. Today’s lynching is incarceration. Today’s lynch mobs are professionals. They have a badge; they have a law degree. A felony is a modern way of saying, ‘I’m going to hang you up and burn you.’ Once you get that F, you’re on fire.”    

- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

The foundation of this trap came in the Jim Crow laws, which legalized racial segregation, and with it came an era of discrimination that wouldn’t be found unconstitutional until the American Civil Rights Act, which concluded in 1965. However, even after these civil rights leaders fought so hard to get the current and future Black Americans’ rights equal to those of their White counterparts, America adapted. Instead of being able to deny jobs based on skin color, companies were able to deny jobs based on criminal history. Ironically, one out of three Black men today can expect to go to jail in their lifetime compared to one out of every 17 White men. The number of people incarcerated from 1980 to 2000 skyrocketed, going from around 300,000 to 2 million. As of 2024, we have 1.9 million incarcerated. Of those incarcerated, 37% are African American.

 This spike in incarceration was pioneered by Ronald Reagan's war on drugs, which placed illicit drugs like cocaine into low-income, Black neighborhoods. Combine this with the over-policing of these areas and you have your final product: The destruction and tearing apart of thousands of Black families. The scars left by this “war” can still be seen in the same neighborhoods today, which are often plagued with gang violence, lack of sufficient education, and so many other issues. 

Today, there is a clear division in the cultures of African Americans that we continue to enforce which allows us to isolate the other side. On one hand, we have those who live in the gang-ridden areas who hate the Black people who are in a better situation than them, and on the other end of the spectrum, we have those black people who live in desirable situations who hate the black people who they believe are reinforcing the negative stereotypes about our people as a whole. No side does anything to help improve the perception of the other; because of this, we may never find unification. There’s absolutely no world in which it’s acceptable to discriminate and murder each other based on if we decided to wear something blue in the wrong neighborhood, or kill someone’s child because you had issues with their uncle, or one of the most petty reasons of them all, discrimination based on the people we choose to be with. Discouraging race mixing is exactly what the people who lynched us centuries ago would’ve wanted us to do.

“Four hundred years later, we buyin our own chains”

- Kanye West, “Saint Pablo.” The Life of Pablo, Def Jam Recordings, 2016

Through this hatred of one another, we’ve allowed our oppressors to keep us in a lower state; we’ve allowed them to enslave us through the use of prison and the justice system, as well as enslave our minds and tell us we can’t be whatever we want to be. The only way we can get the change that we desire is if we can disregard the color someone wears in our neighborhood, ignore the color of the skin a black person talks to, and inspire growth and prosperity instead of constantly demoralizing. When this is achieved we will break the chains that have been placed on us, but until then we will remain enslaved in this new Jim Crow era.

“Call your brothers magnificent, call all the sisters queens. We all on the same team, blues and pirus, know colors ain't a thing.”

-Raspody, “Complexion (A Zulu Love).” To Pimp a Butterfly, TDE, 2015

Works Cited
Alexander, Michelle. “The New Jim Crow.” The American Prospect, 6 Dec. 2010, prospect.org/special-report/new-jim-crow/.

CNN, By Emma Seslowsky. “Bryan Stevenson Says “Slavery Didn’t End in 1865, It Just Evolved” - CNN Politics.” CNN, 8 Dec. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/bryan-stevenson-axe-files/index.html.

Lamar, Kendrick. “Complexion (a Zulu Love).” Www.youtube.com, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt4dUK4uce0.

West, Kanye . “Saint Pablo.” Www.youtube.com, 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9rzz4pDFwA.