The video of Tiara Mack twerking on the beach has sparked spirited discussions online. Like many people who are desperate for attention, however, the Rhode Island state senator’s calculated attempts to go viral pale in comparison to her actual political agenda.

Mack introduced a bill earlier this year to require “pleasure-based” sex education – including instruction on masturbation, oral sex, and anal sex – for students in grades 6-12. Mack also responded to her recent critics with tweets claiming she twerks for abortion, trans rights, and housing, all positions that are on brand for someone who promotes herself as an “unapologetically Black queer woman.”

None of this surprises me.

Tiara Mack is part of a growing divide within black America that will reshape this nation over the next generation. I call this phenomenon the “Great Separation,” because it is a tectonic shift being driven by a combination of spiritual, social, cultural, political, and economic forces.

The horrors of chattel slavery and segregation formed and fortified the black community. At a time when skin color determined a person’s access to goods, property, and justice, emancipated black people created churches, businesses, schools, and organizations to serve their own needs and interests. To quote Ta-Nehisi Coates, “They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people.”

Every tribe needs values, principles, and standards in order to thrive and survive. The success of the civil rights movement can be attributed in part to the high standards of public decorum that were embraced by both the leadership structure and the masses who put life and limb on the line. Black people in that era had strong families, faith, and cultural norms that sustained them through the darkest days of American history.

Much like the broader society, the misuse of freedom and liberty has destroyed that foundation.

The disintegration of the black nuclear family has been a topic of public debate since the 1960s. A nonmarital birth rate of 25% was treated as a cause for national concern at the time. That rate has increased for all ethnic groups but has been over 70% for African-Americans for over twenty years.

In previous generations, pregnancy outside marriage meant either a shotgun wedding or a relocation down south. The current detachment of marriage and children seen at both ends of the economic spectrum (33% of black college grads have children out of wedlock) points to a future of multiple-partner fertility and perpetual co-parenting.

Broadly speaking, religious faith is in decline as well. The percentage of black people who do not subscribe to any religion (22%) is rising. Even more troubling is the long line of black preachers and churches who function as political operatives and outreach centers for the left. Pastor Jamal Bryant of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church recently criticized the overturning of Roe v. Wade, then performed a baby dedication shortly thereafter.

The mainstreaming of hip-hop culture within black America has also undermined collective progress. What started as street journalism has morphed into cultural hypnotism. It is impossible to believe that 30 years of promoting violence, degrading women, and glamorizing drug use would have no effect on the people who identify most closely with the artists. People who believe hip-hop influences fans and cultures overseas but not in the communities artists came from are deluding themselves.

The most potent accelerant driving the Great Separation is the fusion of the LGBTQIA+ political agenda with race issues. Black people have become the face of the transgender movement, which President Biden calls the civil rights issue of our generation.

The public humiliation of Macy Gray is a preview of the future. The soul singer and actress recently told Piers Morgan that surgical procedures can’t transform a man into a woman. Less than one week later, she walked back her previous statements on the "Today Show," barely able to construct a complete sentence or look the host in the eyes.

The tides of the culture have shifted. Denying basic biology is now required to be in good standing on the left. Black pastors who promote biblical definitions of sex, marriage, and the sanctity of life need to understand that they are no longer in the 1960s.

The moral authority and cultural respect they commanded have evaporated. They must either submit to the new norms or be willing to endure accusations of transphobia and bigotry. The men who preached against the Klan will be treated as if they are burning rainbow crosses every time they affirm the gender binary.

Hierarchy is baked into nature, so the issue is not whether a family, community, or country will have leaders, but how those people lead.

One of the root causes of the Great Separation is the disastrous record of the Afristocracy composed of black politicians, activists, intellectuals, pundits, journalists, entertainers, athletes, and religious leaders.

Black Lives Matter listed dismantling the nuclear family as one of its 13 guiding principles. That should have disqualified the group from leading anything or anyone in the black community. Instead, it was championed by tech companies, major corporations, and elected officials.

The NAACP is supposed to be fighting for the advancement of black Americans, but instead it fights so that fewer black children will be born.

Mayor Eric Adams promoted himself as a tough-on-crime Democrat who would bring order back to New York City. What the working-class black voters who powered his campaign got instead is a commitment to keep drag queens in their schools and libraries.

Black Entertainment Television (BET) has been a welcoming environment to pimps, drug dealers, strippers, and violent felons for over 20 years.

The only thing that won’t be celebrated on the network is the public articulation of right-of-center political views. Even the gospel singers understand this. Kirk Franklin can give his boilerplate “God is love” speech, but he will not articulate anything resembling a biblical perspective on gender, sexuality, or the sanctity of life to a room full of artists and entertainers.

The vast majority of black voters support Democrats, so what happens in the party will have an outsized impact on our communities. The hallmark of leftist political thought in 2022 is the belief that improved social outcomes for black people are contingent on bigger government and better white people. This belief is captured most poignantly, again, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who proclaimed that “there’s nothing wrong with black people that the complete and total elimination of white supremacy would not fix.”

You can’t build community with people who have an aversion to responsibility. The quickest way to turn a radical freedom fighter into a White Lives Matter activist is to bring up the homicide numbers in large cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. The victims in all of these locales are over 90% black, but somehow the conversation always leads to the same question: “Why don’t we talk about white-on-white crime?”

Oddly enough, this concern disappears when it comes to fatal police shootings, even though 45% of those victims are white. That’s because the purpose of this rhetorical tactic is deflection, not serious conversation.

This is the Great Separation in a nutshell. The foundations of family, faith, education, and culture have been replaced by subversion, perversion, diversion, and inversion.

Black elites have a narrow set of interests. Their primary goal is prosecuting a case against “white supremacy,” not the betterment of black communities. They think racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are existential threats, but street violence, cultural degradation, and family breakdown are white supremacist tropes. They see an all-black school in 2022 as “segregated” and inferior, regardless of how well students are performing. They think black students need white classmates to succeed. They mask their self-loathing in the language of liberation.

If being black in the coming future means more abortions, fewer intact families, drag queens in every school, Marxist economics, atheism, and big-government dependency, I want to turn in my “black card” now.

Unity is a powerful virtue, but no one would argue that a body that “unifies” with gangrene or cancer is healthy. Sometimes excising part of the body to save the whole is the wisest course of action.

I am ready and willing to build with anyone who understands that our value comes from our Creator and that no community can thrive without families, morals, dignity, and self-respect. Human flourishing will result wherever the natural, moral, and social orders are respected. Human suffering will be present wherever they are not.

The Great Separation is already under way. Which side will you choose?