K.dot’s Clarion Call!

By Dennis Raphael Edwards
Columnist

A major word of bright color and intense community emerged from this year’s Super Bowl half time program. A word ringing clarion in the ears of Black Americans as well as White Women inclusive also of Asians and Hispanics and any other minority groups across America.

K.dot or Kendrick Lamar, the mega popular rapper, said what many of us are and have been thinking. During his highly anticipated  performance Kendrick strongly indicated we can no longer play their game.

Their game? Going along to get along, so to speak! Hoping for change instead of making institutional change. Talking about change but never executing change until avenues for change like Affirmative Action, and DEI, (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) are systematically shut  down.

So now the call goes out from a nationally televised Super Bowl about a redefinition, a realization that the going along to get along option has now been wiped out at Walmart, Target, Meta Platforms Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, McDonald’s, Ford, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman, farm equipment manufacturer John Deere, and with its Tractor Supply’s CEO called out by the National Black Farmers Association for saying “it would be eliminating all of its DEI roles while retiring current DEI objectives”. The company added that it would “stop sponsoring non-business activities” such as Pride festivals or voting campaigns — and no longer submit data for the HRC index.

These indicators are under attack. In need of redefinition as those implementing these old/new ideas are doing more to destroy the goal of an inclusive society than words can say.

Attitudes like these are indicative of so much more than inclusive words ever said. They are the echos of insecurity and fear among the majority with its population and with its voting power under decline.

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Why? Because their numbers in the population are and have been declining rapidly for decades and their status as a majority has diminished more rapidly than anticipated.

A few years ago demographics showed the white population in the United States declining in such a way that the USA would be majority minority by 2030. Now suddenly that projection is being pushed back to around the year 2040. A change I find highly suspect in light of the more recent surge in anti-inclusivity rhetoric.

Can’t say I trust that later date at all. My journalistic sense leans more toward the initial target date of 2030 as far more real and accurate than they’d  like to admit.

So with all of that in mind Kendrick’s Lyric and lament is our clarion call to think differently about our piece of a frightened American economic pie.

To be sure these corporate defections from an inclusive culture to a return to segregation based on color and sex is more than it appears.

It is also an assault on women in the work place since Affirmative Action/DEI benefits white women far more than it benefits minorities. We can therefore conclude this attack against diversity is also aimed at the wives and daughters in their own homes. An attempt perhaps to return them to the roll of home and baby makers with out the independence to live life on their own terms. Another kind of slavery, If you will!

So Kendrick’s Clarion Call speaks to larger masses than many would expect. All in those masses cannot afford to continue to play this suddenly changing  game, especially on these increasingly escalating, discriminating and hostile terms!

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Dennis Edwards is a Major Market Emmy and Virginia Associated Press broadcasters award-winning T.V. and Radio News Anchor, Investigative Reporter, Columnist and Pastor. He is a graduate of Virginia Union University and its Samuel Dewitt Proctor School of Theology.