It is like in those action thrillers or horror flicks. The protagonist has finally found a brief moment of peace from those who are pursuing her or him. She or he is safe for just a second.

In 1984’s Terminator, the respite occurs when Reese and Sarah Connor are in the parking garage. They have survived the first relentless battle with the Terminator and he explains to her exactly what is happening. It only lasts for a moment.

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That is what today feels like. That is what it is. Respite.

I only heard the word “white supremacy” and “white supremacist” twice during the lengthy House hearings to impeach Donald Trump. Once, it was from Rep. Cori Bush, from Ferguson, Missouri.

She got booed from some in gallery. I suspect those were white supremacist Republicans who felt called out for supporting an unapologetic white supremacist.

If Biden don’t give you a sense of a voice, a reason to stay engaged, Cori Bush does. Does not mince words. Focused on people and not profits. An activist, and former nurse, she gets it.

Watch her moves in the common months on the key issues. Track her speeches and what she supports. Like AOC, and some others. Even if a law passes, check out her take on it. …

This year will mark the 100th Anniversary of The Tulsa Riots of 1921. This was when a lie was used by white supremacists in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to burn down a prosperous Black city in America.

Perhaps as many as 300 Black people were killed, 10,000 were rendered homeless, and 35 blocks of a city was laid to waste. The cause? — White supremacy.

It was also back in 1921 that James Weldon Johnson became Secretary of the NAACP. Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was surging in popularity and had more members than the NAACP.

You could probably say Black people, in America, had no faith in their country back then but they did (and do) have to survive and carry on. …

Of today’s Republican Party, the writer, Mitchell Jackson recently wrote in Esquire Magazine: “…I do believe the present version of the Republican party is out-and-out undeserving of Black support.”

“ In fact,” Jackson adds, “Black folks who support Republicans in light of their long train of abuses and usurpations do so at the expense of justice for Black people at large.”

Most of the older Black men in my family, at least those born before 1930, were Republicans. Many other older Black men when I was growing up were also Republicans.

It used to be not so strange. Now, there is tension at this idea of being Black and a Republican in the Trump era of the party. …

And Adolph Hitler went to prison in 1923. He was arrested in a failed coup and spent a year in jail. His Nazi Party was banned for a short period of time in Bavaria.

But, 10 years later, he was in control of Germany. We know the horror of that mistake for millions of people.

But his ideas won the people over.

Racist, genocidal ideas. But also, nationalist chatter and German pride. Germany as victim, as exploited and economically degraded after World War I. Hitler’s agenda to restore Germany economically and in the world resonated.

Poet Haki Mahbubuti has said that ideas run the world. They do. This is why ideas are important now. …

Others

Toni Morrison died in 2019. She didn’t witness the death of George Floyd or the global response. She also wasn’t around to see all those Confederate memorials come tumbling down this past summer.

Nor did she witness the following:

• The tackling of the son of jazz trumpeter, Keyon Harold by a white woman in a hotel after he wrongly accused him of stealing her cellphone.
• The other shootings of Black men which almost go unrecorded now they are so normal (but not normal).
• The killing of Breonna Taylor. The cover-up of that death.

Morrison warned us all of the hatred of the “other” and how it would continue to poison all. Her steady hand, and wise and willful voice, is missing right now. …