A few days ago, I sat in disgust reading how Texas Rep. Nicole Collier was being held in the Texas legislative chamber because she refused to sign a permission slip agreeing to surveillance and a police escort to ensure that she would return to chambers. I found myself wondering, “Where are all the prominent anti-racism authors and voices that took up so much space in the last decade?”
In the months since Trump’s return to office, while the regime and its supporters have taken a wrecking ball to our alleged democracy, his primary focus has been on immigrants and non-white folks with an ever-increasing focus on Black folks.
To recap the situation in Texas, Collier—an attorney, a mother, and the first woman to represent Tarrant County’s House District 95 in North Texas—was protesting the decision by the Texas House to order 24/7 monitoring by DPS state troopers of Texas Democrats who broke quorum over the past two weeks. More than 50 Texas Democrats left the state last month for Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts to protest racist redistricting efforts by Texas Republicans. In addition to creating five more Republican seats in Congress, the Texas GOP’s redistricting map would substantially reduce the representation available to Black and brown Texans. (Source)
So, in 2025, a Black woman was essentially held hostage by a group of white people and it was broadcast and, initially, all I saw of people out supporting her were other marginalized people.
If that wasn’t bad enough, a few days ago, it was reported that Edward Martin, director of the Weaponization Working Group for the Department of Justice, has called on New York’s Attorney General Letitia James to resign after the group opened an investigation on James to determine if she has engaged in criminal activity. If that wasn’t enough, Martin was spotted outside of James’s home, in a trench coat, posing with a New York Post photographer. Martin, when questioned by neighbors, said, “I’m just looking at houses,” but he later told Fox News, “I’m a prosecutor … I wanted to lay eyes on it … I wanted to see the property.”
To refresh your memory, James was the prosecutor who beat Trump and the Trump organization in court, when a judge found that Trump and the organization improperly inflated assets in financial documents to get favorable loan terms. Oh, did I mention that James is a Black woman and, as of this writing, it is being reported that an appeals court threw out the $500 million dollar penalty in James’s case against Trump.
Earlier this week, Trump took to his personal propaganda network to declare that “Museums throughout Washington and all over the country are the last remaining segment of ‘woke’ and the Smithsonian is out of control talking about how bad slavery was … I have instructed my attorneys to go through the museums [with] the same exact process that was done with colleges and universities.”
Essentially Trump and company have decided that they want to whitewash American history because talking about slavery makes them feel bad and makes America sound bad. They are tired of all this “woke” talk and, well, they are going to eradicate it by stripping away the funds required to fund museums that dare to defy him by telling the truth about history. Given how many colleges and universities have quietly done away with DEI-related programming or initiatives to keep the government spigots flowing, I am not confident that many institutions will stand tall against this madness, which brings me to my point.
Where the hell are all the white and other non-Black anti-racists and activists who made money curating large platforms or writing anti-racism books and becoming household names between 2016 and a few years ago?
I recently realized that I haven’t seen any of these people on social media. I haven’t received any newsletters from them and pretty much all of them seem to have gone quiet. In fact, for all the loud yelling about fascism, the only people loudly naming the racism that is part and parcel of this fascism is Black folks and sprinkle of non-white activists of color and a super small handful of white folks.
Honestly, Tim Wise is the only well-known white anti-racist author and activist who hasn’t stepped down. Then again, Tim was in the work before it was a thing. I met Tim back in 2013, when I was coming on board at my day job as the incoming executive director at my organization’s 45th anniversary celebration, where I was being introduced to the community.
I was seated at the head table with Tim and had a chance to talk in depth with him. Tim is friends with my predecessor at Community Change Inc., and was friends with our founder Horace Seldon, who died in 2016. I have had a chance to work directly with Tim since coming on board, and while his online demeanor has created questions in certain anti-racism spaces, the Tim I have come to know is sincere in the work. He’s only a few years older than me—a Jewish man in the South, born in Tennessee; schooled in Louisiana. Tim understands the intersections of class and race well, particularly amongst working-class and poor white folks, so it is not surprising to me that he is still around and active.
Other notable white folks who are still in the work, while lesser known, are Dara Silverman, who while currently working as an embodiment teacher and racial equity coach, was one of the original founders of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). We initially connected early in my tenure at my current position, and it was with her encouragement that we created the Boston chapter of SURJ, which is still up and running and in a moment of “the world is a small place” I recently connected with her during her vacation in my neck of the woods. Another person still in the work is author and activist Chris Crass, who I have worked with over the years and who primarily focuses on working with white men.
But the white folks who at one point were everywhere talking about white fragility—the ones who helped propel “woke” to the masses and who at one point when the world was eager for DEI work were making lots of cash between books and speaking engagements—where are they? The racially ambiguous folks who were fundraising, the ones writing books and creating social media platforms to further their careers? Where are they? The ones selling high-priced dinners for white women? Where are you?
Until this moment, anti-racism work wasn’t dangerous, and it was damn lucrative for many. At the height of the popular moments of the work, speakers could earn upwards of $20,000-plus for a speech. I shit you not. I can’t say that I ever earned that. The most I ever earned for a single speech was about $6,000. Apparently not having a book made me less attractive because the anti-racism authors with the books were the ones raking it in, but the unspoken piece is that a lot of white folks and a few Black men and non-Black people of color were the high earners. And yet, as our nation crumbles and Jim Crow 2.0 is taking hold of the country, the only people loudly naming what is happening are primarily Black folks, mostly Black women.
The thing is now that DEI is no longer in fashion and the contracts have dried up and the masses have moved on, and there is real danger in being loudly actively anti-racist, the so-called allies and accomplices are nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile in the last week, I have seen several Black activists who have written books and are known but who never blew up like the white activists crowdfunding for healthcare and basic survival.
I am trying not to be bitter but given the direct attacks on Black women now, it is hard not to be disillusioned—to see white people who loudly proclaimed just five years ago that “Black lives matter” suddenly MIA. Yet now, when it is the time to literally put skin in the game, after they helped to amplify the work—thus indirectly playing a role in creating this moment—our allies are nowhere to be found.
What purpose was served by elevating white fragility and DEI work if people disappeared when it was no longer personally profitable and safe? White people being able to recognize their inherent privilege means very little if they aren’t using it to move the needle. If white people can’t use that privilege to keep people safe, again: What value does that serve? Too many of the same white people who recognize their privilege thought themselves too good to talk to the white people who were suckered by Trump the first time. Either they didn’t trust in themselves or didn’t want to have uncomfortable conversations with Uncle Rusty the racist. Now we are sitting here with fascism and Jim Crow because they thought writing books and giving speeches and running workshops were going to reach the white people who felt left behind in a changing world. They believed that the first Trump term was an “oops” that wouldn’t happen again. Instead it was the first step in the great Re-Whitening of America. They failed to read the room because the real privilege of whiteness is only seeing what you want to see, not having to see everything and stay aware—oops, woke.
I look back at many of the white anti-racists of the last decade and think they created more harm than good, if I am being honest. They played a large role in making our work, which has always existed, more visible at a time when our country was racially uneasy. But instead of working with their fellow white people and laying the foundation for deep change, it was the foundation for deep resentment and hurt feelings, because too many white anti-racists only wanted accolades from fellow whites who were already on the journey or head pats from Black and brown folks so they could feel like “better than thou” white folks.
To be clear, there are still white folks in the work. I meet with them regularly, but they weren’t newcomers, or the recently awakened, or the people who reaped big bucks. They were the ones who already had a racial analysis or who came with a social justice understanding. For the white folks who have stayed at the work, I am grateful to you. For those who still learn from Black and brown activists and who don’t steal our work or consume without compensation, I am grateful for you, too.
But for the ones for whom it was a passing fad, and who are silent at this critical time because of fear or whatever, I am side-eying you hard. For the ones who almost certainly were higher paid at the height of the work’s popularity because you had the privilege to be able to write the books that helped earn you more money and who are now silent, woe to you. In many ways, how different are you from those other white people right now, who actively seek to take this country backwards?
A literal genocide is brewing in our country. As I write this, it has been reported that the regime will be reviewing the visas of 55 million people currently in this country. Friends, that is one in six people in this country. They will be looking for any reasons to deport these people, no matter how flimsy or false. Add in the mass deportations and kidnappings already underway and the attacks on Black and brown people in this country, they are full speed ahead on creating a white-only country.
No, we aren’t starving like our brothers and sisters in Gaza, but with the unchecked cruelty that is packed into the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, it won’t be long before we see more homeless and hungry people, who almost certainly will be scooped up and put into work camps, thus creating a free work force, pretty much like the one that built this country’s wealth. The one of which I am direct descendant.
As a Black woman, my words may read as hyperbolic hysteria but at this point, none of their plans are hidden. Many have just chosen to ignore them at their own peril and everyone else’s. As the great Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” We are eight months into this communal nightmare; they have shown us who they are and the only way to possible stop this thing is to get more of us in the work.
My anti-racism work was born out of watching the weight of racial injustice play out in my family. It grew when my son was teenager and experienced his first overt racist encounters and my inner mama bear was activated. My work was born out of the personal, and the personal is political, and it is what has guided me through the decades. I started writing about race before social media was a thing, before platforms and brands were things. I was just a young mother trying to make sense of the world, wanting a better way for my child. Now, I am a middle-aged mother and grandmother, wanting the same thing, but now for my grandchildren as well. Recognizing that as the first generation in my family that wasn’t born into a world of slavery and Jim Crow, if we don’t course-correct, I might be the only generation born fully free and who got to live most of my life as a free Black woman in this country.
That is not acceptable to me and. This work calls us all to be willing to sacrifice to move forward and push back against the fascists who seek to strip away out hard fought freedoms.
Will you join me? What are you willing to risk?
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Image by Siviwe Kapteyn via Unsplash
I love your words but I fear they will go unread. Black people, my people, are not fighters. We preach sister and brotherhood but we turn our backs for survival. I am angry at the direction our people are taking. When will we wake up. If we don’t really begin to work as a race of people we will perish.