Professor Tanya Hernández is referenced for a CNN article that discusses the shift in the black community’s willingness to forgive past tone-deaf or racist actions by both white and black public figures.
Most commentators portray Harris’ exchange with Biden during the second night of the Democratic debate as a potential game-changer for the Democratic presidential nomination. But Harris dropped a bomb on Biden that’s bigger than politics. She exposed a psychological shift in some parts of the black community that’s been building for years.
The old days of black people putting up with questionable leaders because they felt like they had no other choice may be over. No more talk about trying to understand white people’s racism, forgetting the impact of slavery, moving on from the past because “this is a time of healing.”
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But unlike O.J. Simpson in an earlier era, Smollett was never able to rally the community behind him because blacks are becoming more savvy about the difference between “authentic blackness” and “strategic blackness,” Tanya Hernandez, a professor at Fordham University’s School of Law in New York, told me during an earlier talk about Smollett.“The contemporary Trump world means we don’t have the luxury to be uncritical about who gets our communal love and support,” said Hernandez, author of “Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination.”
Hernandez said 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.”
