Ever since CNN dug up the Lt. Governor of North Carolina's posts from a pornographic website written years ago, this pivotal swing state is getting new airplay. JD Vance puts it this way. “It’ll be very hard for us to win unless we’re able to get North Carolina.”

So what if Robinson calls himself a “black NAZI,”or supports re-legalizing slavery, and refers to civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. as “Martin Lucifer Koon?” It’s a strategy, right? “I think you’re better than Martin Luther King,” Trump doubled down at a campaign event in March. “I think you are Martin Luther King on steroids!”

Be that as it may… the most recent Black American to make a big splash in North Carolina was Barack Obama, but the Tar Heel state will now have to pony up something more than a flip. In just 36 days, North Carolina will have to reconcile itself with race. In doing so, it clears a pathway to America’s future.

Will this “Husband, Father, Grandfather, American Patriot, 35th Lieutenant Governor of the Great State of North Carolina, and Candidate for Governor” Mark Robinson’s posts present Kamala Harris with an edge? Or, rather, do they simply reveal America’s deeply embedded double consciousness? Robinson writes on NewsOne:

If the cops wanted to shoot an elderly black man they should have shot Al Sharpton; Obama IS a blackface step-in fectch-it [sic] for liberal white America; and Oprah is the wicked witch leading the way to sexing up the children!

More than 10 Republicans and conservative groups have either canceled events with Robinson; erased their digital footprints to distance themselves down ballet; or withdrawn their endorsements altogether. But that's conversation. Trump has ghosted Robinson, JD Vance calls him “gross,” and the numbers never lie. The staff are resigning and it seems the increasingly isolated candidate is running out of cash, too.

Harris claiming North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes will make Trump’s path to the presidency dramatically more difficult. Stakes are high and the race is tight as the nation riffs between making America great again, or becoming an even larger liberal bastion welcoming immigrants to a burgeoning welfare state.

As the nation enters its 36-day home stretch of whats been called “the most important election in the nation’s history,” Americans must, at least, consider where their founding fathers failed. Waxing poetic about power means nothing without authority. Authority, dear readers, that is and always has been informed by the nation’s consciousness.

Souls of Black Folk

Duel Consciousness is to have two distinct streams of consciousness in one person. Ralph Waldo Emerson introduced the term in a 1842 essay "The Transcendentalist,” but it was W. E. B. Du Bois who first described the African American experience of double consciousness in "The Souls of Black Folk:"

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

Americans who experience a split in consciousness may conflate their sub-cultural heritage with the attitudes in a dominant society to compete or survive.

Beginning with the indigenous peoples of America, subsequent discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, and sexual orientation has and continues to characterize the national conversation. But it was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852 that introduced the nation to African Americans.

Though “Uncle Tom's Cabin” is dominated by a single theme — the evil and immorality of slavery — Stowe wove sub-themes of moral authority into the subtext. Temperance, free labor, love and forgiveness were entailed into stage and scene, thus directing the nation’s attention to 3.5 million slaves and the plantation economy.

But it was the mocking descriptions of the Black characters' appearances, speech and behaviors that sold the best-selling novel in the world during the 19th century. Stowe intended Tom to be a “noble hero,” who, like Jesus the Christ, forgave those responsible for his death. However, the stereotype of Tom as a subservient fool subordinated by white man prevailed, and was often invoked in the Black Power Movement.

Robinson, a political neophyte, propelled to media fame after speaking extemporaneously in defense of gun rights, rode his reputation as a bombastic black man critiquing racial justice all the way to the rank of lieutenant. Now cap in hand, Robinson’s performance reminds us what Malcolm X promised: “a man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”

Black Power

“Black Power: The Politics of Liberation” observes:

When a subordinate group emulates an oppressive population double consciousness is achieved.

Barack Obama warned the Tar Heel state “Don’t be bamboozled” in 2016 when he won North Carolina. A state that has participated in every U.S. presidential election except one during the American Civil War, when it seceded to join the Confederacy. Election 2024 has been called every bit as consequential.

Since achieving statehood in 1789, North Carolina has voted for president 58 times but only got it right 39. While Harris makes this scandal-plagued Republican the star of her campaign to win North Carolina, Trump, oddly, remains silent.

In this extraordinary reversal of double consciousness, it remains, as yet, unclear to Americans: Who is the burden, and who the instrument seeking a stable future.