This article was originally published by The Emancipator.
It’s an age-old question: In politics, when faced with an onslaught of regressive and racist policies aimed at erasing hard-fought rights and the history of our struggles, how best can we resist and what does it mean to survive?
The answers can be found in the wisdom of the abolitionist and civil rights forebears reenvisioned for a modern age. Some activists and leaders look toward the example of those who achieved progress by deftly code-switching to address both sides of the narrative.
Others look toward the example of direct demands for equity and claiming our space — by any means necessary. Still, others rationalize that the ends justify the means and are willing to swallow slights and indignities to gain the ultimate upper hand.
The ideologies differ, but the end goal is the same: liberation as defined by each person.
This month The Emancipator examines the lengths we go to survive, which, at times, include methods of navigating racism that seem uncomfortably counterintuitive.
In an exclusive sit-down with controversial former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, held during the African American Mayors Association Conference last month, our conversation raised sharp ethical questions about the difficult trade-offs we sometimes make to gain access to the levers of power often closed to communities of color. He argues that sometimes means meeting those who seek to oppress you at the table.
In 2013, Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison for racketeering, bribery, and fraud crimes and, after serving seven years, he received a commutation from President Donald Trump in 2021.
Since his release from prison, he has emerged as a political voice on criminal justice reform. He spoke candidly on how he believes Trump is amenable to reform due to his own 34 felony count record.
The former Democrat-turned-independent-Trump supporter denies reports that he is seeking a presidential pardon.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Chandelis Duster: I would love to jump in on a topic that’s very important to our readers here at The Emancipator, which involves criminal justice reform. What are your thoughts on criminal justice reform under this administration, especially when we are seeing a rollback on civil rights offices in nearly every agency, including the DOJ.
Kwame Kilpatrick: Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in this country, Black, White, Indian, Arab, Latino, that believe that civil rights are not needed anymore, which is ridiculous to me, but mostly because they haven’t experienced it.
I myself, because of the felony on my record, was denied an opportunity to go on a field trip with my son because of the rules of the school board. And so these are things that [Trump] does care about and said, [pardon czar] ‘Alice (Marie Johnson), ‘who are the people that are already out that have lived their life and they’re doing a good job and have done well that we need to just clear their records?’
That’s the first group. The second group, ‘go back to the prisons and find people like you that deserve a second chance at life outside of those barbed-wire offenses.’ And so he’s charged her with that. And then the third thing he’s done is saying, ‘And, I want you to pull together some criminal justice advocates that really want to get something done, not that want to be political, and put them at a table where we could talk about the criminal justice process.’
So, she has a huge charge in this administration. There’ll be people wrapping their arms around her and supporting her, like me, and others that’ll be helping her do that work.
Given what the president has said about criminality, what does the administration need to say to Black men and also do for Black and Brown people in general in this approach to criminal justice that would make Black and Brown communities more open to hearing them out? Because right now what you’re seeing is people who are even scared to come out of their homes because they’re scared that they’re going to be targeted and that they’re going to be thrown in the back of a van and deported somewhere.
First thing, is people need to stop being scared. I know this is unpopular, but this whole thing, ‘I’m scared. I’m scared.’ You’re told to be scared every single day. Turn off the TV first of all and really start to think about ‘how do I do the things that I need to do to make my life better in my community?’
And I think it will start reducing the fear because we won’t hear somebody telling us to be scared every day with the headlines and this kind of thing. And this has nothing to do with Donald Trump. I think our community is inundated with fearmongering.
It’s fearful to go to the store at the corner. It’s fearful to pump gas at night. It’s fearful because you hear about all the crime all the time in the communities. … And I just think we have an opportunity to stop all the fearmongering that we continue to be victims to if we just turn off that box and talk to one another.
Secondly, I’m different in politics. I’ve been hearing what people say for a long time. I’m more interested in what you do. While Donald Trump was on television, they were talking about [how] you should be scared of this guy. He is a racist. He is racist, racist, racist. If somebody is labeled a racist, we stop everything.
This is politics. It’s a contact sport. So what, somebody’s racist. I worked in the state legislature, it’s racists in there. It’s racists, that work in Congress. It’s racists that work in statehouses all over. I had to go talk to those people and figure out how we produce public policy. … You cannot start and stop a conversation based on who’s racist or not. We got to cut it out.
Our forefathers bled, died for us to be able to sit in the seats that we sit in. We can’t be in there all emotionally soft, worried about who racist and who is not. What difference — everybody was racist a hundred years ago. But you and I are sitting on a Zoom right now because those people still pushed policies. Frederick Douglass still went to the White House and talked to the president.
Mary McLeod Bethune still went to the White House and talked to the president. Why? Because they couldn’t stop and start on racism and emotional squeamish stuff. We got the devil to fight and we also have people to free. I want Black men to be free so if I got to go talk to a racist to do it, I’m going. If I got to go present policy to people that don’t like Black people, I’m going.
We’ve seen the administration, when it comes to certain websites, removing references to Harriet Tubman and putting it back. And then there’s the executive order that came out about “divisive narratives” regarding the Smithsonian Institution and then the comments that were made about the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Are there any policies that make you uncomfortable or certain actions that you see being taken by this administration that you believe will be harmful to Black Americans?
A whole bunch of people that are Black want everybody to feel bruised, battered, assaulted, and everything when somebody says something about Black people. I was having a conversation with mayors, and this was the subject, “I can’t deal with him because he’s racist.” I never understood that my whole life.
I never understood that. I know who I am, first of all. I’m from the neighborhood, I went to the Detroit Public Schools. I don’t need a White person to validate me. I don’t need another person to tell me I’m okay. I don’t need to sing ‘Kumbaya’ with nobody. I don’t need to feel loved and I don’t feel right.
I don’t need to feel scared and all that nonsense. And I’m not overdramatic, but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of this. Everybody just, “They said something about us.” Man, listen. Stop.
We always talking about what Trump is doing or what this guy’s doing or what this person said. I’m far more concerned with what our position is. I’m far more concerned with these knuckleheads killing each other in the street. I’m far more concerned with the miseducation of our young people.
I’m far more concerned with the lack of access to capital. I’m far more concerned with the issues that we need to discuss as a community and we need to fight for than constantly being in this old school, civil rights, ‘I’m scared and they rolling back this and all that.’
At some point, we got to use the dynamism and brilliance and moxie and confidence and courage that we have in our own community and create our own opportunities and engage people from an offensive perspective and not always playing defense, scared.
Is there something that we have not discussed when it comes to Black Americans, the Black community, and the political climate that we’re in that you would like to say?
I simply say this last: You and I wouldn’t even have the ability to do what we are doing right now if a little preacher down in Atlanta, 5’9, didn’t have the moxie, the courage, and confidence to go sit in the White House with a racist president who used the N-word readily all the time, a Southern Democrat who hated Black people out of his own mouth. Dr. King went and sat with him, negotiated with him, did so many things, and kept visiting with him, called him, and he made sure that he got the civil rights bill done.
If Dr. King would’ve had the same attitude as [Black people] have today where we just, ‘Ooh he racist, I can’t talk [to him],’ we would never have a civil rights bill. We would never have equal protection under the law. We would never have some of the things — we wouldn’t have schools where we all go to together. We wouldn’t have the joint access to education and to college programs.
My whole point is if all of our arguments, all of our movements start and stop with who’s racist, we wouldn’t have any advances. There would be no Harriet Tubman in our history books. There would be no Mary McLeod Bethune, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois. There wouldn’t be no Martin Luther King because everybody was racist. And we need to get back to understanding. We need an agenda no matter who we got to take the agenda to.
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