Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Will Biden heed the call of Black pastors who want a ceasefire in Gaza? Over 1,000 Black pastors from around the country representing hundreds of thousands of parishioners have signed open letters urging President Biden to tell Israel to stop the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
In a time of moral clarity, Black people, including young Black people, are pushing back against Biden for enabling this mass slaughter, and he is losing Black voters. In fact, Black support for Biden is “teetering on the edge” over Israel and Gaza, Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Georgia told CNN.
Only a few years since the summer of racial reckoning that America has yet to reckon with — the 2020 murder of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd — young Black people are witnessing the horrific live-streamed genocide of Palestinians on social media.
For Black people who retain the trauma in their DNA after enduring the Middle Passage, apartheid and racial massacres like Greenwood and Rosewood, the Israeli slaughter of Gaza feels familiar. This is what systemic violence rooted in Western colonialism, white supremacy, racial dehumanization and oppression looks like.
“When I look at the young people in my congregation and in the community, the young people are on fire,” Rev. Frederick Haynes III, president and CEO of Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas told PBS’ “Amanpour and Company.” “And those [cellphone] notifications, I promise you continue to enrage what they see as this country being complicit in what is going on,” he added.
Black religious leaders have also responded with a new anthem called “Ceasefire,” courtesy of “Make It Plain” host Rev. Mark Thompson, Common Hymnal and Friends, and others. When Black folks put…
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