Black America's Fading Moral Conscience

Black lawmakers in Washington have lost the plot. And worse than that, they have lost their courage. Fascism is rising. Genocide is livestreamed. And what used to be the moral conscience of the most powerful country on Earth, Black leadership, is being hollowed out by cowardice and legalized corruption. The very people who should be standing tall are nowhere to be found. Instead, we get silence. Duplicity. Excuses. Dismissals. If we are going to make it through this moment as a nation or a global community, it will not be because of the spineless Black lawmakers in Washington clinging to stale seats and committee assignments. It will be because Black civil society, as we have done time and time again, stood up to tame the cowardly monster of American white supremacy. Not just for our benefit. For everyone.

Audre Lorde put it plainly: “We are citizens of the most powerful country in the world, a country which stands upon the wrong side of every liberation struggle on earth.” She wrote those words while urging Black America to use its power against apartheid, police terror, and imperial war. That line still hits hard today, because it reminds us that our blue passports tie us to an empire, and our silence in the face of its heinous injustices licenses its violence. Black moral clarity is not a luxury - it is a safeguard for every oppressed people the “empire” is willing to sacrifice for profit or power.

Black people cannot afford to turn their backs on human (or civil) rights - never, but especially right now. We’ve always been here speaking truth to power. Frederick Douglass was an early proponent of geopolitical equity, justice, sovereignty, and anti-imperialist diplomacy.  Serving as the U.S. minister to Haiti in 1891, he stopped the U.S. Navy from grabbing a Haitian harbor and forewarned that bullying the first Black republic would make America an oppressor. Fast-forward to 1935 when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, and twenty-five thousand people flooded Harlem’s Seventh Avenue to protest and express their outrage. Black America stood with a Black nation under attack while Washington shrugged in indifference.

That instinct kept growing. In the 1940’s, Ralph Bunche, a groundbreaking diplomat, scholar, and strategist, played a key role in shaping the postwar global order. As an architect of the United Nations (UN) Charter and later the first Black person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Bunche believed deeply in multilateralism, decolonization, and global racial justice. He championed self-determination for colonized peoples, and brought a steady, principled Black voice into the highest circles of international diplomacy

At that same time, nearly a decade before the Supreme Court even considered dismantling segregation here at home, the NAACP, under the leadership of Walter White, was already in San Francisco pushing the nascent UN to take racism seriously. In 1945, while white delegates were debating the shape of the postwar order, NAACP attorneys were there trying to embed an anti-lynching clause into the first draft of the UN Charter. Two years later, W. E. B. Du Bois submitted a 96-page petition to the UN called An Appeal to the World, charging the U.S. with systematic human rights violations against Black Americans. It was a courageous move that came with personal consequences, but it made clear what Black people have always understood: racism in the United States is not just a civil rights issue. It is a global human rights crisis.

In the 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) told Congress it would not fight in Vietnam to defend the same racist forces they were resisting at home, rejecting the idea of dying for freedom abroad while being denied it in America. Dr. King echoed that stance in his famous Riverside Church speech, calling the war in Vietnam a moral disaster that betrayed both American ideals and global justice. Meanwhile, inside Congress, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., John Conyers, Charles Diggs, Shirley Chisholm, and Ronald Dellums used their platforms to condemn the war as racist, imperialist, and morally indefensible.

Black leaders did the same with South African apartheid. Starting in 1971 Rep Ron Dellums filed sanctions bills every session and aired South-African torture victims on Capitol Hill. Fourteen years later Congress overrode Ronald Reagan’s veto and slapped sanctions into law. 

In the late 1970’s, Andrew Young brought a strong moral compass to the United Nations. As the first Black U.S. Ambassador to the UN, he challenged apartheid, advocated for African liberation movements, and pushed the United States to stand on the side of human rights and self-determination.

Decades later, Barbara Lee cast the lone “no” vote on the blank-check war bill after 9-11. History proved her right. 

The pattern is clear: whenever America lands on the wrong side of freedom, Black voices try to drag it back toward the side of justice. We bleed, we organize, we legislate, and we win. The real question now is whether today’s Black lawmakers will change course to honor that legacy or continue cashing it in for donor money.

I spent 13 years at the State Department, working on some of the most historic diplomatic efforts of our time. I was in Paris for the climate agreement. I was in Vienna for the Iran nuclear deal. I was part of the Cuba normalization process. I sat in rooms with world leaders and decision-makers. 

Thirteen years in Washington also offered me a master class in money, power, and whiteness.  And much of my career, I’m sad to admit, was mostly in service of those three things, little of which made a material difference for my family and friends back home in Atlanta.  Sure, nuclear nonproliferation and climate action matter to everyone. But what about the rest of it? The shadow wars. The unethical arms deals. The racist economic warfare dressed up as America-first sanctions and tariffs. In one meeting with the press team at work, I finally snapped and said, "It is not the messaging. The reason we cannot convince everyday Americans that our foreign policy benefits them is because most of it doesn’t.”

The gap between our foreign policy and our domestic priorities has always been too wide, and both have become far too undemocratic and unaccountable to the American people in recent years. It is past time we fix that.

That’s why when the Biden-Harris transition team called and asked me to join the Administration on day one to help rebuild and repair our relationships around the world, I said yes without hesitation. After all, my hometown did help swing the election. So I showed up at the White House feeling authorized and dutiful. I thought we were about to implement some real systemic change, not just optics and virtue signaling. I believed that my experience, voice, and values would be welcomed. I thought the most diverse White House and Cabinet in history might actually welcome diversity of thought.

Silly me. What we got instead was a small circle of mostly old white men making every major decision. The Black staff they hired were brilliant and committed, but we were also sidelined. Many of us were brought in to be deputies, never the ones to make final decisions on important issues. 

But even on the Hill where there’s more empowered Black leadership, it's the same thing. Many of our lawmakers unplug their phones the second they are sworn in. They want one hundred percent voter participation on election day and zero percent accountability thereafter.

Black Americans, including Black lawmakers, used to be the moral conscience of this country. Now? We have Black lawmakers who legislate like rich white men. During this last presidential election cycle, many of our Black leaders in government and civil society spent exponential time and energy trying to convince hundreds of thousands Americans (who hate genocide) to turn a blind eye to a genocide everyone was watching unfold in real time… instead of trying to convince the one candidate - the AKA from Howard, the former District Attorney and Attorney General - to say that we can protect and advance U.S. interests while sill following U.S. and international law.  We got caught up in the hype and made her above reproach. We traded our critical and prophetic voice for proximity to power. We let big money warp our sense of right and wrong. We stopped shouting demands for collective justice from the mountaintop and started whispering in the hallways of senate buildings.

And since I’m an Atlanta native, I need to talk about Senator Raphael Warnock for a second. A man of God and pastor of Atlanta’s world-renowned Ebenezer Baptist Church, who absolutely knows right from wrong but allows his hands to be tied in the name of pragmatism. There’s a video of him from 2018 (before he became a senator) preaching the truth about Israel and Palestine. Now, after nearly a million dollars in donations from the pro-Israel lobby, he pays the occasional lip service about protecting civil lives but has continued to vote to send more military aid while close to a million men, women, and children in Gaza have been bombed, shot, or starved to death. That is cowardice. I do not know how he sleeps at night.

Meanwhile in the Great State of Georgia, white households hold eight times more wealth than Black households, and Black families earn about $16,000 less per year on average. And yet Senator Warnock continues to vote to send billions of our tax dollars in weapons and other military aid to a genocidal government instead of demanding that money be invested in Black homeownership, small business growth, and closing that urgent wealth gap here at home.

Sure, we would prefer cowardly Democrats of any race over Republicans. But it needs to be understood that Americans deserve more than a choice between “bad” and “hardly better.”

Democratic leadership is spineless. Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of them will bend over backward to defeat someone to the left of them but jump at the opportunity to reach across the aisle for something which the American people never asked. They won’t even support Zohran Mamdani, who won the primary in their own state. That's dismissing the mandate endorsed by half a million New York City residents, many of whom are Black. That's not democracy. 

How is it that Democrats and Republicans (both voters and lawmakers) are usually on polar opposite sides of virtually every issue, but the one time the American people overwhelmingly agree on something (like pushing for an immediate ceasefire) is also the one time Congress unites to do the exact opposite?  

How is it that Cory Booker can not only put out mildly worded statements that are barely critical of that genocidal government but also opt to join a photo with the ICC-wanted war criminal presiding over that genocidal government…and at the same time try to hide from the camera? This mixed messaging is bad for future political aspirations, but more importantly, that lack of integrity is bad for the soul. And hoping the hypocrisy goes unnoticed is not a strategy.  Americans (by and large) are not dumb, so as James Baldwin put it, we cannot believe what you say because we see what you do. 

Democrats think they have a messaging problem, but they don’t. They have a conviction problem. They have a capitalism problem. They have a duplicity problem. They have a democracy problem. The fire our Black leaders used to have is dim, replaced by a pitiful bunch of moderate opportunists, where incrementalism is the excuse and pragmatism is the alibi for doing nothing but waiting their turn to hold the gavel before dying in that seat.

Aside from a few exceptions, our Black lawmakers are not working for us. They are working for the billionaires who make our lives harder. Cory Booker. Angela Alsobrooks. Nekima Williams. Lucy McBath. Joe Neguse. Lisa Blunt Rochester. David Scott. Steven Horsford. Greg Meeks. Jim Clyburn. All of them and many more are beholden to donors who do not have Black America’s best interest at heart.  And as for Ritchie Torres…yuck.

This is not meant to be a personal attack (except wrt Ritchie) or incendiary just for the sake of it. I single out Black lawmakers because it is Black Americans who have long been the moral conscience of this country. That responsibility is sacred and it carries weight. So it is devastating to watch people who were raised in the tradition of truth-telling and moral clarity now mimic the power structures we were sent to disrupt. White progressives have a role to play, especially in clearing rhetorical space and pushing the boundaries of discourse. But this work is not about white liberals. They are not the vanguard. This is another head of the Hydra that is white American patriarchy, and this moment requires clarity that comes only from those who have survived and tamed this monster time and time again.

Let me also be crystal clear: we must stop celebrizing politicians. These folks are not your faves or your besties. They are your employees. I jokingly tell my friends that I keep it cordial and surface-level with my neighbors. Friendly enough to ask them to grab a package off my porch, but distant enough that if I need to curse them out, I can do so and still sleep like a baby. That is the energy we need with politicians. Respectful, but ready to drag them when they sell us out. And they will.

America deserves leaders like Stacy Abrams and Barbara Lee.  Thankfully, we have a few Black leaders in Congress who still tell the truth. Hank Johnson. Andre Carson, Ayanna Pressley. Al Green. Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, and a few more.  And while Cory Bush and Jamaal Bowman may have lost the battle, they did not lose the war. For people with backbones, the struggle continues. The courage shown by these leaders remind us that principled leadership may be scarce, but it’s not extinct. We need more like them: younger, less encumbered, unafraid to speak from a heart full of moral conviction and without poll-tested talking points. 

We need Black Democrats who are willing to lose a seat, offend a donor, and piss off the party establishment when necessary. If you have to betray your community (or more importantly, yourself) to stay in office, maybe you don’t deserve to be there. If you can’t legislate like a Black person with a moral compass, what is the point of electing Black leaders?

This is not a plea. It is a warning. While what the Israeli government is doing to civilians in Gaza today is awful in and of itself, Black and other marginalized Americans should be concerned because the U.S. government may very well try to do it to us tomorrow. White liberals in Congress may be able to afford to be sometimesy with human rights, but Black lawmakers need to be unbought and unbossed during this critical inflection point in human history.

This is not about left versus right. It’s about right versus wrong. It’s about true, inclusive, multi-racial democracy versus power, money, and whiteness. American foreign and domestic policy is wildly undemocratic. Most Americans have no clue what is being done in their name. And why would they? Our so-called representatives spend more time taking calls from lobbyists than from voters.

The rest of the world sees our hypocrisy. We used to claim the moral high ground. That illusion is over. From unconstitutional ICE raids to Gaza to constant police killings to taking glee in building Alegator Alcatraz, we've been exposed.  We are not who we say we are. Authoritarians across the globe now point to our disingenuousness to justify their own tyranny. We are not ushering in democracy around the world. We are helping spread unchecked capitalism and authoritarianism.

Black Americans are in a unique position. We can still be the moral conscience of the most powerful country on Earth. We have tamed this cowardly monster before. We'll do it again. And when we hold this country to its stated values, we know we’re not just protecting ourselves. We’re building moral credibility to stand up to injustice beyond our borders. And this time, Black Americans will not not be alone in holding the U.S. and other imperial forces to account. We are linking arms with Black people in Brazil, South Africa, Barbados, Kenya, Colombia, Cuba, and beyond. We’ll need unwavering support from a strong AU and formidable CARICOM.  This time, even more so than in the 50s and 60s, we need to form a global army of pro-Black justice warriors, ready to right long overdue wrongs.

Once we (Americans who cherish democracy) wrestle back control of our government, we must start shaping a foreign policy that actually reflects our values and advances the interests of everyday Americans. 

Black Americans, in particular, should be advocating for global economic rules that uplift the exploited and that don’t just favor the powerful. That means pushing for debt cancellation in the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America, rewriting trade deals so former colonies can actually build wealth instead of only exporting raw materials, and demanding climate financing that helps our people adapt and thrive without indebting them for generations. We should be organizing to hold international financial institutions and corporations accountable for what they take and where they invest. It’s time to build an international economic system where Black people, everywhere, can live with dignity and determine their own futures.

But first, we must stand ten toes down in our own stated morals, values, and promises.  Of course Black civil society will lead because it always has. But if our Black elected officials cannot find the courage to lead with us, we will treat them like any other politician too scared, too compromised, or too comfortable to do what is right. The time for symbolism and virtue signaling is over. The world needs real courage now more than ever before.

Once again, Black Americans will save this country from itself.  And when the smoke clears, it will be us standing, extending an olive branch to the same country that has tried to kill us for centuries. We will be the ones, yet again, toiling to make this a more perfect union.  But this time, we will demand more for our democratic labor and expertise.  We’ll paint a new picture of the American dream. We’ll expand what it means to be American. We will use the economic and geopolitical might of the U.S. government (which we built entirely for free) to back Black liberation movements globally and position ourselves, for once, on the right side of freedom struggles.