Audre Lorde’s admonition that the tools used to build structural inequity will never dismantle it feels more apt than ever today.
But Black and other oppressed people in this country have proved time and again that a tool of oppression in one hand can be a tool of transformation in another. Last week, we witnessed two Black men get expelled from the Tennessee Legislature in a targeted campaign to disempower and disfranchise them and their communities. And they used democratic processes to be reinstated in a body that, at its inception, never envisioned their presence in politics in the first place.
The Tennessee Three show the reach and resonance of Black political power in coalition with allies on issues of justice.
When Nashville officials moved to reinstate 27-year-old Rep. Justin Jones, and when Memphis officials moved to reinstate 29-year-old Justin Pearson, they did so in defiance of the history and heritage of a state that is the site of one of the worst racial massacres on American soil, in which 46 Black people were killed and many more injured in 1866. It’s the same city that witnessed the recent killing of Tyre Nichols, one of the most brutal police slayings of a Black person in this country to date.
Indeed, Nichols’ death at the hands of mostly Black law enforcement officers underscores the depths to which anti-Black racism has permeated all of society. It is also why the image of two strong, unyielding, self-possessed young Black men in power is so threatening to the status quo.
The Tennessee Three — as both representatives, along with their colleague Rep. Gloria Johnson, have come to be known — show the reach and resonance of Black political power in coalition with allies on issues of justice. And these alliances will only increase as more cross-sections of the population — those who support gun control; reproductive rights; diversity, equity and inclusion; and democracy— are further marginalized by a minority of extremist conservative power brokers.
Rather than welcoming the evolving demography of this country with an imagination of possibility, a dying minority is confronting it from a place of fear and hysteria in the form of counter-constitutional measures and state-sponsored lawlessness. We see this most starkly in the usurpation of Black political power and the disfranchisement of voters in places like Tennessee, Mississippi, St. Louis and Washington D.C., where the will and representation of Black communities have been disregarded at best and directly attacked at worst. The concerted chaos that has engulfed the Tennessee Legislature, instigated by a counter-constitutional super-majority, should be a cautionary tale for all.
We will only win as a country in this time of certain flux if we are as unrelenting in the application of principles of democracy, equality, equity and freedom as conservative extremists are in their willingness to destroy the republic.
Dismantling systems of structural inequity will require the invention of new tools by those who have been most directly affected, and a new blueprint for our democracy. That work is happening with a new generation of leaders, like Jones and Pearson, and a multigenerational movement in support of an inclusive and equitable multiracial democracy. It is our job to create the space for a new foundation of democracy to be forged.
Janai S. Nelson
Janai S. Nelson is the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), a premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality since its founding in 1940.