Who's the REAL Enemy? - Elevate Post
By Josh Epperson
Blog Series
Elevation is a series of blog posts being presented elevating community voices from People of Color. Last week in the wake of unrest in our city and after making a public statement we decided to take more concrete action steps to dismantling white supremacy. We invited individuals, without stipulations or rules, to submit writing and we paid them for their time. We decided to offer our blog as space for them to share a message of their choosing in response to the 2020 Racial Uprising happening in the wake of 400 years of discrimination and the recent death of George Floyd in Minnesota and locally the death of Marcus David-Peters among other countless black lives taken. We value the energy they put into their writing. To contact the authors, please see the end of the piece.
My perspective on racial justice completely transformed when I finally understood the enemy. It's not the cops. It’s not the GOP. It’s not racist DAs and federal judges. It’s not the KKK.
It’s the story they all believe.
With that realization my world opened, and I saw a clearer path to true liberation from this racist society. If we can understand the enemy as a story, it’ll be key to fighting back in a more coherent, aggressive, and effective way.
What’s the Story?
America has a long history of race-based storytelling. But there is one story about Black life that came before all others.
Before the narrative of “states’ rights” was a rallying cry for former confederates. Before the fairytale of the “American dream” was a thing. Before the fantasy of “urban renewal,” and the tall tale of “make America great again,” a story was created that still shapes the cultural contours of this continent: Black life is of little value.
This false narrative is an enemy of the American people. Yet, as a biracial Black man, I came late to this understanding.
When Michael Brown was murdered by police in 2014, I questioned where I fit in the fight against racism, and deep education became my initial form of resistance. The more I learned about the history of racial justice, the more I questioned who we were fighting.
All my life, I saw the enemy through superficial demographics: it was the cops, the Republicans, or the neo Nazis. But, if that was the case, why did Bill Clinton sign the bill to militarize the police? Maybe the enemy was just white people? But what about my mother – the white woman who raised me? And why does Ben Carson exist, or Candace Owens? More and more, a single demographic couldn’t completely define the enemy.
It was a footnote of American history that forced me to see who we were really fighting.
An Enemy with a History
This American story that devalues Black life was created for profit. Throughout the 1600s, slavery existed on the North American continent, but not all Black people were enslaved. Tobacco planters in Virginia used indentured servants, both Black and white. If they survived the work, indentured servants could earn their freedom from the planter and build a life – and sometimes did. Then, in 1676, a militia rose up to challenge the power of the planter-led government. It was a broad coalition: other rich planters, poor whites, as well as Black and white indentured servants. The rebellion eventually failed, but not before scaring the shit out of the ruling class.
In the fearful wake of a multiracial, multiclass uprising, planters shifted from relying on indentured servants to solely importing enslaved Africans. In laws written soon after, the racial condition of the country was solidified: if your skin was dark, you were property; if you were white, you didn’t necessarily have it well, but at least you weren’t like them.
And there it was: a story about race born from divide-and-conquer tactics. Initially created to quell a broad coalition uprising, the story equated Black bodies with enslavement, so the ruling class could grow fat. This was the narrative that allowed human beings to rape, murder, maim, and terrorize other human beings.
“Ever since, the toxic story that Black people deserved less respect, value, and dignity has been built into the fabric of the American identity.”
Ever since, the toxic story that Black people deserved less respect, value, and dignity has been built into the fabric of the American identity. So much so, it has been confused with truth. The story spread not just through our systems, but in every aspect of social and private life -- whether in racist paintings, food packaging, toys, postcards, home decoration, or later, films and TV.
The telling of this tale has worked so well, I began to see how I had adopted it too. I had let myself become more cautious of Black men after dark. Enough episodes of Cops had taught me well. I also knew I had struggled with identifying the worth in my own Black identity.
Yet, understanding the enemy as a story gave me new hope for how we could all fight back.
Fighting the Enemy
In his ancient military strategy guide, The Art of War, Sun Tzu famously advised:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Knowing the enemy is critical to winning any battle. Yet, if we confuse the enemy for something it’s not, we will continually suffer defeat. A battle with just the police or just politicians is hard to win. But to battle the story they’re telling means we can fight the enemy wherever stories are told: in government, in police precincts, but also in our schools, in our homes, in our entertainment, in our social media posts, at Thanksgiving dinner, and a night at the bar.
When our enemy is a story, we can all be warriors. Whether we fight through protest, teaching, parenting, creativity, or public policy, we can all add our chapter to the story of Black worth. We can all, in our own way, stab at the enemy from where we sit, where we work, and where we play.
By changing the narrative from Black life as expendable to Black life as beautiful and worthy of happiness, we can undo the long, racist work white America has invested in. This is the power of saying Black Lives Matter. It is a new story in the fully aware American consciousness. And the stories of Black worth are more accessible than ever, giving more Americans a chance to share and amplify the value of Black life.
Knowing the enemy enables us to create the stories and systems that actually demonstrate our value of Black people in America -- and that’s a fight we can win.
About the Author
Josh Epperson is a writer and thinker living in Richmond, Virginia. On the internet, he lives at josheppersonwrites.com