By Carla Thomas
The Truth Contributor
There was a time when it was illegal for Black people to read. When we couldn’t own anything because we were owned. When we couldn’t eat in the same restaurants as white people, couldn’t go to college, and were written into the Constitution as three-fifths human.
Ohhh but look at us now. We don’t just eat in those restaurants, we own them. We run businesses, cities and even became president. This didn’t start with us. Our ancestors built towns and schools and led movements that rattled America awake. We didn’t just make history, we changed it.
But I have to ask, have our progress and accomplishments diluted our desire and ability to fight? Has this progress allowed us to slow down in a way our elders couldn’t afford to?
Our ancestors fought like their lives depended on it, because it did. Every step forward cost them blood, sweat and time in jail cells. They didn’t have the luxury of sitting back and saying, “We’ve made it.”
With respect to what we’ve achieved, we can’t afford to pretend the work is done. It’s easy to believe we’ve already arrived. We got money now. Titles. Followers. Access. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating that, as long as we remember, better than is not good enough. Not when Black men are still being lynched in 2025. Not when police are still killing Black people at disproportionate rates year after year. Not when Black pregnant mothers still face medical racism and die from childbirth complications at more than three times the rate of white mothers. Not when this administration continues pushing policies that target Black and Brown communities and protect systems built on white supremacy.
We talk about progress as though it’s liberation, but progress inside a progressively anti-Black system is not true liberation. We’re still surviving the same harmful systems, dressed up to look like success.
So the real question is this: with all the progress we’ve made, are we truly seen as equal in this white-supremacist America, or just more comfortable with what we’ve been given? Because individual progress doesn’t mean collective liberation. A few of us may be winning, but if even one of us is still being killed, targeted, or discriminated against, we haven’t arrived as a people.
Roland Martin said something that should make us all stop and think:
“We have Black infrastructure: D9, Prince Hall Masons, Eastern Star, The Links, but that infrastructure is being used for personal gain, inward gain, not external Black gain. That is our greatest problem. We get a little piece of something and become satisfied.
We’ve gotten so individualistic that people feel like they’ve ‘made it’ because they’re in this group or that organization, instead of using that power for our people.
These groups are thousands strong, 17,000 members, 20,000 members, but what are we doing with that power? Issuing letters of ‘disappointment’ isn’t action. If we think we’ve overcome, we’re delusional. We haven’t. There is work to be done.”
He’s right. We’ve built organizations with thousands of members, but what are we doing with that power?
Somewhere along the way, we got comfortable being included. We stopped expecting change. Corporate America learned how to sell “diversity” back to us and call it progress. They turned our fight into hashtags and job titles. Meanwhile, the same systems still decide who benefits and who doesn’t.
We’ve mistaken access for autonomy and proximity for power.
What’s the point in having a seat at the table if you can’t control what’s being served?
Maybe the real question isn’t whether we’ve made progress, but whether progress has quietly softened our urgency. And if that’s true, then the greatest threat to us right now isn’t oppression, it’s complacency.