Patriann Smith, Ph.D.

Approximately one year ago, on the eve of the early release of the book “Black Immigrant Literacies: Intersections of Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom,” I was forced, amidst my advancement of the long-standing movement of #justice for #Black lives, to reckon with the utter devastation and horrific erasure of innocent lives in the #Israeli community.

Like so many millions of us across the globe, since this birth of my book, my heart has been breaking also, for fellow innocent #Palestinian humans and families who have continued to be slaughtered with reckless abandon; this amidst the devastation of #Congolese and #Haitian communities elsewhere whose lived realities continue to be snatched away by the brutality of war, so cruelly and so despicably, while we and our children have watched, in horror, feeling almost helpless amidst the many attacks on those, who, aligned with organizations such as the United Nations and CARICOM, have dared to speak up against these atrocities. 

Silencing Invisibility

For scholars racialized as Black, those racialized as people of Color, and others scholars racialized as White, all of whom have dared to show our support of innocent Palestinian and Israeli families alike, we know all too well just how the past year has functioned, representing a silent yet pervasive attack on our personhoods and well-being on numerous fronts, and requiring the intervention of the Creator God for the mere preservation of our lives. Reliant on the universities with which we are affiliated for our daily bread, and for the livelihoods of our children, we have been forced to contend with what our conscience compels us to condemn on the one hand and a supposed invitation to implicitly condone catastrophe on the other.

Like so many whose yearning for justice fails to discriminate — we have always wished for all humans, Palestinian, Israeli, Black, Asian, Indigenous, Hispanic, African American, Caribbean, White, etc. alike what we wished for ourselves and our children, an unfailing justice — we never did expect that we would see in our brief and fleeting lifetimes thus far here on earth, such a reckless resignation to the utter obliteration of so many innocent humans. Alas, the echo of The Black Eyed Peas‘ “But if you only have love for your own race, Then you only leave space to discriminate” continues to ring true.

Harnessing Spiritual Fortitude

As we have watched, along with millions of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers, whose hearts intertwined with ours, continue to weep across the world, the massacre and maiming of so many babies and children, we have drawn on our spirituality in this never ending dark year of our earth’s history, asking the Creator #God, the careful designer of each sacred human’s destiny, to intervene in the lives of the innocent Palestinian families who continue to be brutally eradicated from the earth due to no fault of their own. At the same time, we have prayed without ceasing for the #Israeli families enduring an unending pain from such horrific loss and from an incessant awaiting for hostages that have not been allowed to go home. 

Like we are sure many continue to do, we have purified ourselves, fasted, prayed, pleading with the Creator God through deep and soul-searching agony, to influence the minds, hearts, and spirits of our leaders here in the US and abroad in Israel — those to whom so many of us have given our trust — to show grace and mercy as we have now become complicit, whether by omission or commission, in this emboldened massacre of our fellow humans. Alas, our faith has been tested. And the Creator God of our ancestors on whom so many of our White immigrants and refugees historically relied during the birthing of this US nation while escaping brutal attacks on their humanity in Europe and elsewhere, the same God who sustained our Black ancestors brutally and transatlantically forced from Africa to the Americas as slaves, has again required us to trust in the divine hand amidst our continued yearning for a lasting justice that recognizes and reaffirms the humanity of Palestinian and Israeli people alike. 

Thus, still we wait. 

Resuscitating a Dormant Collective Consciousness

Amidst yet another impasse in this long-winding stream of glorified calamity that continues to besiege a world brought to its silenced knees while children and babies die, it is fitting that the celebration of the anniversary of the publication of my book should begin today, on the aftermath of the US 2024 election — a book birthed in the hope of a just Black global liberation — functioning only as a reiteration of my unapologetic stance, assumed last year, regarding the shared humanity of Palestinian and Israeli peoples alike, and extending now also to Congolese, Haitian, and the many other families and communities who remain assailed by the throes of destruction.

And though just one mother, one scholar, one small-island human, one Black transnational #SaintLucian called into this journey of becoming #American, yet forever an #immigrant with insufficient history of the facts to know all there is about the Israeli-Palestinian war or all wars — what my spirit tells me is morally right, inherently humane, and fundamentally just cannot be left up to the flawed logics of a pervasive post-truth intellect devoid of soul. Instead, it must be grounded in the God-given humanity bestowed upon the heart of each of us — a heart, whether as child, adult, president, country, #Democrat or #Republican, we are each called upon, like the Biblical Esther, to harness for such a time as this.

Thus, as one voice joining millions amidst a universal shared consciousness persisting in silenced solidarity with innocent Palestinian and Israeli lives this past year, I choose today, on the almost anniversary of the publication of “Black Immigrant Literacies,” not as a professor affiliated with an university, or with a college, organization, state, or nation, but as a human indelibly endowed with the God-given gift and spiritual capacity for moral reasoning, to again, stand openly and with conviction, on the right side of history, calling upon the now incoming United States administration, as well as on the Israeli government, in all humility of conscience, soul, heart, and spirit, to hear the cries of our intertwined beating heart and of our #sharedhumanity, in granting at long last, a ceasefire and a home for all Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace, with their God-given self-determination in tact.

Redeeming a Just Liberation for All

Whether this call and those of the many like me who continue to wait, is heeded or not, we know now, that already, the price of the massacre in which we, as world nations, continue to be complicit, will be required at our hands and at the hands of our children. We can choose today to continue this carnage that holds morally hostage our world of humanity and that hastens the damnation which awaits our families, or we can begin, at long last, the path to a shared generational redemption for all of our children. Alas, as history has repeatedly shown us, the keys to a just present lie nowhere but in our capable hands. 

On this aftermath of the US election, a day rapidly becoming history and destined to be forever etched into the memories of our descendants of the now and of the future, may the stirred moral and collective resuscitated consciousness of our yet uncalloused just imaginations across race, country, and creed be one that stands ready to redeem us and may the Creator God help us all.