On the 16th day of Black History Month, Special Counsel Robert Muller filled an indictment against multiple Russian nationals and agencies. He accused them of intentionally meddling with the most sacred behavior of the republics—our presidential election.
Specifically, he focused on the actions of a group called the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This organization used many of our current social movements as a guise to spread false and salacious information in an effort to tilt the election in favor of the conman from New York. They focused on religion. They exploited immigration. For the purposes of this piece, I am going to focus on how they tried to exploit black personhood.
According to the indictment, the IRA created group such as “Blacktivist,” which encouraged blacks to vote for Jill Stein. Another group called Woke Blacks made posts and arguments that election media coverage was “forcing blacks to vote for Killary.” And throughout multiple social media platforms, Russian agents purchased advertisements encouraging all sorts of political behavior for blacks, save one—electing Clinton.
We know the end results of their efforts. 45 won. The United States now endures being ruled by a black hole of a man. Many writers focused their electoral coverage on the voting behavior of white people—of how white people of different genders, educational levels, geographical location, and wealth united behind a candidate who consistently portrayed black and brown people as criminals, rapists, and terrorists. Many of 45’s supporters were exposed to Russian propaganda via Twitter and Facebook. The evidence shows they were swayed.
But there is another story here, under-reported. These tactics did not work on black people. We overwhelming supported Clinton in the general election. The failure of Russian propaganda speaks to black personhood and the persistently dim view the world has of it. We will be overpowered, outflanked and even killed by nations. But we will not be made into fools in front of the world. Black personhood, in this late stage of world history, refuses to be hoodwinked by an exhausted Russian superpower. We currently endure the strongest nation in recorded history. Putin never stood a chance in swaying us. Black people will always understand much more clearly the impulses of white nations—much better than they will ever understand themselves.
And that is why media coverage has not focused on this aspect of the Russian failure. Examining it would reveal the political savviness of black personhood. There is simply no other explanation of how black people have survived in America post slavery—through a nearly centuries long regime of segregation and terrorism—without understanding the myriad political behaviors that we have developed in the crucible of the American experiment.
Post-emancipation, those behaviors begin with the struggle between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Washington wanted blacks to build up their communities and economies in the face of the terrorism from white people in the South. DuBois, from northern stock, knew that would not be enough. He organized and formed organizations that would agitate for full political rights and protections.
All black political behavior flowered from the soil these two men grounded. Washington’s train of thought inspired many of the black political activists who focused on black empowerment. We thus get Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association; A Philip Randolph’s organization of the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters; the business acumen of Madame C.J. Walker; and the eventual black empowerment rhetoric of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.
In the DuBoisian strain, Ida B. Wells gifted black people with her extensive reporting on lynching. The NAACP deployed agents all throughout the South to build on her legacy and to develop legal foundation that would show segregation was unconstitutional. Men like Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. provided the voice and the strategy needed to begin the rise of black personhood to full citizenship. And martyrs like Medger Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer shedded blood in their service to their community.
I know little of the cloaks and daggers on the world stage. But those geopolitical actors ignore our long political history at their peril. Black personhood, in defiance of the long and bloody world history of minorities living in empires and nations, has survived due to developing sophisticated political behaviors. The IRA thus wasted enormous amounts of manpower and financial resources trying to change black political behavior. The KKK’s terrorism could not do it.Voter suppression could not do it. Only through not understanding the people they were trying to bamboozle could the IRA believe that we would fall prey to memes and Twitter ads.
Robert Muller is only a temporary knight. When his work is done, he will return to private life. The historical forces the Russians exploited during the 2016 presidential election that white people fell for— and black personhood resisted—will remain. Black personhood has created political behaviors that have ensured our survival for 153 year post-emancipation. Russia misunderstood this, a function and evidence of the global reach of white supremacy. And in their failure is a cure for our political nightmare, a way to protect the nation from enemies domestic and foreign long after 45 is gone.
It requires, however, white people overcoming their fear of a black planet.