A Black People’s Guide to Navigating Political Bullshit

Part 2: Socialism

Socialism (noun): A political and economic system in which the community collectively owns and controls the means of production, distribution, and exchange - prioritizing the common good over individual profit.

Long before European philosophers put a name on it, African villages ran on it.

Harambee. Pulling together. Kenya built an entire post-colonial nation on that single principle. The elders divided the harvest. The village raised the children. The community buried the dead and planted the next season. Nobody called it socialism. They called it survival. They called it home.

Then America got hold of the word and turned it into a weapon. Pointed it directly at us.

The DSA and the Squad understand something Bernie Sanders spent forty years almost figuring out.

The Democratic Socialists of America organize around housing, healthcare, living wages, and canceling student debt. AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush walk into Black communities leading with dignity and policy. They see the people first.

And then there’s Zohran Kwame Mamdani - the democratic socialist who won the New York City mayoralty and took his oath of office in a subway station under City Hall at midnight on New Year’s Day. A tenant organizer, a former state assemblyman, a son of Uganda who now runs the largest city in America. His middle name is Kwame. As in Nkrumah. As in Pan-African liberation. As in the belief that collective power belongs to the people - all of them. That name is not a coincidence. It is an inheritance. And on January 1, 2026, New York City voted to collect.

He stood before the city and declared: “I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist. I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.”

Bernie walks in and leads with crime and poverty. Every single time. The diagnosis before the greeting. The pathology before the person. Black communities deserve better than a savior who can only see the wound.

The Honor Roll - They Called It Socialism. We Called It Leadership.

Shirley Chisholm - The first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black candidate to seek a major party presidential nomination. Chisholm fought her entire career for universal childcare, healthcare, living wages, and equal education funding. She didn’t build a movement on ambition. She built it on the radical belief that government existed to serve every single person inside its borders. They called her too radical. She ran for president anyway.

Fannie Lou Hamer - A Mississippi sharecropper who became the most dangerous organizer in the Deep South. Hamer built collective political power among people the system had designed to stay powerless - poor Black farmers with no land, no money, and no protection. She got beaten bloody in a Mississippi jail for registering voters. She walked back out and registered more. Her entire life was a socialist act - ordinary people pooling courage, risk, and determination to claim what the powerful hoarded for themselves.

A. Philip Randolph - Built the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters into the most powerful Black labor union in American history. Randolph understood that collective worker power was the only counterweight to concentrated corporate wealth. He organized Black workers into a force that moved presidents and changed federal policy. The FBI watched him for decades. The movement never stopped moving.

Huey Newton - Co-founded the Black Panther Party and built the most comprehensive community socialist infrastructure Black America had seen since Reconstruction. Free breakfast for children every morning before school. Free healthcare clinics in communities the medical system ignored. Collective self-defense against police brutality. Newton called it survival pending revolution. The government called it a threat and spent years dismantling it. History calls it a blueprint.

Now here comes the Republican playbook.

The same people screaming socialism at the Squad go home and cash their Social Security checks. They drive on public highways. They send their kids to public schools. They call the fire department when the house burns down. They stand by the mailbox waiting on the postman to deliver the DOGE check they were promised.

Every single one of those things - socialist programs. Built by the government. Funded by taxpayers. Used daily by the loudest people in the room.

The people railing loudest against socialism fall into two camps - the very rich, who understand exactly what collective power would cost them, and the very poor white working class, who have been convinced that socialism is something that happens to other people. Nobody told them the double-wide was always within reach. Nobody told them the union card was the key.

They don’t hate socialism. They hate the fact that Black people get it too.

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Jul 24

Before we get to Karl Marx, before we get to the Soviet Union, before we get to anything Republicans want to throw at you - let’s go back further. Way further.

Read Part 1: Communism. Share both. Wake somebody up.