Kinship requires both an understanding of the self-in-relation andthe ability to project, to position, oneself as part of an extended networkof relatives. We know our relations by virtue of our lived experiences, aswe understand those experiences in the context of cultural and historicalparadigms that give them substance. In this, relations expand beyond thematerial and toward the unknown—they are not just of this world, but ofthe beyond as well. They exist in the present, and toward iterative becom-ings that are neither past nor future, but both simul taneously. Relations area form of reckoning with time, space, and what vibrates between bodies—love, fear, joy, hope. Relations open pathways to thinking and being inreciprocity

“Okay, what’sBlack film? It’s not Hollywood or it’s ‘againstHollywood’ ” so that’s a fairly radical ideawhen you’re first confronted with it.

“The Three Evils of Society,”Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave us a message and a gravewarning; “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution ofvalues...when machines and computers, profit motives andproperty rights, are considered more important than people,the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism areincapable of being conquered.”

We havenever been more empowered and yet, in many ways, are stillso disenfranchised.

First, we have to realize that, for the most part, we can’t rely on most whitepeople. It is a recurring historical truth. Sure, there are white exceptions whoare antiracist and want liberation, but they are rare. I am glad to see a largenumber of white people in the streets protesting on behalf of Black lives. Iremain cautious, though. I have seen countless videos of white millennialsescalating out-of-control situations when we know that Black and Brownpeople are going to experience the brunt of white supremacy’s force. I’m stillstruggling with the video footage of a young white woman yelling in the faceof Black police officers, including a Black woman, that “they are the problem”and telling the Black woman to “smile for Breonna Taylor.”4 While I dobelieve the police need to be abolished, this white woman was more engagingin an act of whiteness than one of genuine protest. She might have sincerelybelieved in police abolition and desire justice for Breonna Taylor, but she mustnot forget that she is white, and even though Black police officers can showout for their white officer peers, and they are working for the state, it stilldoesn’t sit right by me. Just because you are anti-police, that does notnecessarily mean that your whiteness has disappeared or that anti-Blackracism is gone.

t might seem controversial to call Africans and their descendants’Indigenous peoples, but it is not. To reclaim, insofar as we can imagine, theIndigenous roots of Africans in the diaspora is neither an attempt to replaceIndigenous peoples of the US nor to act as settlers in some real or imaginedreturn to Africa, as previous generations have done. However, we do have toaccount for the fact that, besides some cultural remnants that were able tosurvive historical erasure, Africans living in the US, because of enslavement,were stripped of their heritage

According to political scientist William Galston, liberal democracyhas four components: republican principle, democracy, constitutionalism, andliberalism. He defines “republican principle” as popular sovereignty. Peoplelegitimate the government. “Democracy” means that all citizens have equality,and the structure of the government is inclusive citizenship.“Constitutionalism” means that the structure of the government exists inwritten form, a document like, for example, the US Constitution. Liberalismcenters on people’s individual rights and privacy. us, liberal democracycombines all these elements, though popular sovereignty is limited.8 USliberal democracy has been “living beyond its means” since the beginning.9e Founding Fathers have built debts that they or contemporary whiteAmericans will never be able to pay off.