A columnist has sparked a debate after calling for a reverse ‘Great Migration’ and suggesting Black people should go back to the Southern states to challenge racial hierarchy.
Charles M. Blow is a New York Times columnist and an author who shared the controversial plan in his new book titled ‘The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto.’
In his book, Blow touched the topic of the Great Migration – the 20th-century movement during which some six million African Americans left the Southern states and migrated northward in search of a life free of oppression – and called for a reverse migration that would challenge white supremacy in the Southern states.
“Black people fled the horrors of the racist South for so-called liberal cities of the North and West, trading the devil they knew for the devil they didn’t, only to come to the painful realization that the devil is the devil,” the columnist wrote.
As he went on to suggest, African Americans could now “upend America’s political calculus and exponentially increase Black political influence” by moving back to the South and building a “contiguous band of Black power.”
“The point here is not to impose a new racial hierarchy, but to remove an existing one,” the author insisted.
“After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy, it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.”
According to Blow, who appeared to downplay the power of protests that followed the death of George Floyd, the right way to contend the racial inequality is to upend the political system in the country by centralizing black power in the states he called “the true centers of power in this country.”
The author also took aim at Northern metropolises as he suggested that Black communities in such cities were “abandoned by the Black elite” and now resemble “permanent refugee camps.”
“White people in destination cities are committed to the same control over the Black body to which the law has been dedicated in this country from the beginning, a strategy that the modern North has adapted from the historical South,” Blow wrote.
As the NYT columnist, who failed to provide an action plan for the realization of his idea, added, Republican presidential candidates would likely not be elected in the last fifty years if the Great Migration didn’t happen.
“If the Great Migration hadn’t taken place, Black people could control or form the majority influence for as many as ninety Electoral College votes, more than California and New York State combined,” he argued.
“And if they and other groups voted the same way that they do now, they could have ensured that almost every president in the last fifty years was a Democrat.”
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Replaced!