Remembering Where You Come From: Supreme Court Admission Decision & The Faces of Anti-Blackness

There is this saying that one should “never forget where you came from”. It is often presented as a warning because of the “dangerousness” in forgetting. When we forget, we lose out on the history/understanding/compassion that should inform what we do now.

In the recent Supreme Court Decision that rolled back consideration of race in college admissions, there are many who have “forgotten where they came from”, in not only their role in this decision, but also in their reaction to it.

Clarence Thomas has not only benefitted from his skin color in his own college admission, but also in his being nominated to the Supreme Court in the push for white supremacy to have a Black face to push its agenda.

Clarence has forgotten where he came from.

He has also failed to remember his own use of race-based trigger words in attempting to get the Black community to rally behind him after his harassment of Anita Hill, calling it a “modern-day lynching”.

Lynching. The traumatic experience of many of our ancestors for simply existing in Blackness.

Considering race has mattered for Clarence Thomas. He has “made the most” from his Blackness. Yet, in trying to distance himself from those experiences, to “forget” the role his Blackness has played in his own elevation, Clarence is now leading the charge to keep others who look like him from the same opportunities.

Candace Owens chooses daily to “forget” where she came from. Her history of suing for racial harassment and seeking support of the NAACP (which acknowledges race/color in its very name), she sought help to address what she perceived as unfairness coming to her because of her Blackness, and with an organization that identified race as a factor in not only our systemic oppression, but within our goal of liberation/equity. She has also seemingly gotten amnesia to the fact that her voice, too has been amplified by those who want to justify white supremacy by having its words flow from the mouth of someone with Black skin. She is the manifestation of “it is okay because my Black friend/commentator agrees with me” — -an argument that is rooted in the very Blackness that she is insisting should not be a factor in how the world works.

White women are denying the need to remember that they have profited the most from affirmative action. In its loose definition of including those who were traditionally not included in the workforce or in receiving business contracts, their white male counterparts overwhelmingly chose them to meet their “quotas”. They were counted on because of the often-proven belief that they would value their proximity to cisgender white men over others who had been excluded like them.

The United States is burying its head in the sand of its own systemic oppression and historical exclusion of Black and Brown people from the American Dream. It has failed to fund Black schools in its own argument of “separate, but equal”, and continues to find a way to underfund schools in predominantly Black and Brown communities through redlining and withholding the owed amount of funds to state-supported HBCUs.

It has strengthened its resolve to “forget” how it its ongoing denial of loans to Black and Brown businesses, and its redrawing of electoral district boundaries to dilute the voting power of minority voters, have assisted in not pushing toward the “level playing field/pull self up by bootstraps” goal that it states we will meet through erroneous decisions like this current Supreme Court one. Even worse, it has unapologetically advocated for further forgetfulness through the pressure to remove the remembrance of historical and current practices that have marginalized and harmed minority communities from our schoolbooks and even our general literature.

There is power in our memories.

There is true understanding of the consequences of our actions housed within our past.

There is room for growth when we recall from where we started.

There is resilience and resistance in retaining the knowledge of how this country denied the very humanity of our ancestors.

As we watch the current state of our world, we must take note of those who are turning a blind eye to what is happening or openly celebrating the attempts to further push Black and Brown communities to the margins.

Many know the saying “those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.”

In this time, it would be deadly for us to forget.

Dr. Tyffani is a licensed psychologist who centers the needs of Black Women and Girls in her work. She is committed to never forgetting where she came from and insists that it inform her present.

#DrTyffani #SupremeCourt