Tanya Hernández was quoted in a CNN article regarding actor Jussie Smollett allegedly staging a hate crime attack.
There was a time when the black community gave unconditional support to black public figures who invoked racism, but Smollett’s case is already showing how that script is being rewritten.
Blacks are becoming more savvy about the difference between “authentic blackness” and “strategic blackness,” says Tanya Hernandez, a professor at Fordham University’s School of Law in New York City.
“The contemporary Trump world means we don’t have the luxury to be uncritical about who gets our communal love and support,” says Hernandez, author of “Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination.”
Hernandez says the black community and its allies cannot continue “to carry brothers who act in ways that call into question the existence of real violence and bias.”
“We are literally being killed,” she says, “and there is no room to carry parasites.”
