Up until three months ago, the average white American never lived in fear of their government. The more enlightened white American understood that the government was unfair and unjust and treated marginalized people unfairly, but until Trump started his second term and the executive orders start to fly—and Elon Musk and the DOGE crew took a wrecking ball to the actual infrastructure of the country—it wasn’t something that the average white American could fathom.
For the duration of this country’s history, white skin has meant privilege of some sort. It meant protection. It meant some level of fairness. It didn’t mean a government that no longer cared about you.
Which is probably why, despite the chorus of Black women’s (including Kamala Harris) stark warnings prior to the election that a second Trump term would be opening the door to fascism setting up shop, it was simply unimaginable to the average white American. After all, we survived the first Trump term. Certainly, we would survive a second term. The talk of fascism and a blatant disregard for the actual laws, including the rule of law and tearing down our country, was simply unimaginable. This despite the almost 900-page document that Trump’s cronies wrote detailing their intentions and Trump’s insistence that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 even as his own plan pulled liberally from that document. Certainly, many white people said, this was fear rhetoric and hyperbole.
Fast forward three months and it turns out Harris wasn’t lying and neither were the millions of Black women who worked tirelessly to get Harris elected. Not all of us were in love with Harris (raises hand) but as Black women, our survival historically has depended on our ability to read the room. Many of us understood that a second Trump term was going to be a disaster and not just for us.
In the four years since his last visit to the Oval Office, Trump had time to perfect his cruelty. He had an ax to grind, and he had a cabal of wealthy tech bros and others who wanted an excellent return on their investment. He was also going to return to the Oval Office with no guardrails, as the majority of those who served in his first term were not returning and a number of those same people broke their silence prior to the election and said that Trump would be dangerous to all of us if he secured a second term. He was looking to surround himself with the most loyal sycophants and well, loyalty to Trump and his ideology pretty much eludes common sense or a sense of right or wrong and, in many cases, also means a complete lack of competence to do one’s actual job.
Trump is a showman and a chameleon; he has the uncanny knack of speaking the language of racist white people and those who feel left behind by progress. He’s ignorant and outright stupid but he is also shrewd and a consummate performer. That’s how he convinced not insignificant numbers of marginalized communities (ahem, Latinos for Trump being rather sadly notable) to support him, even though his master dreams for the country would directly harm those communities.
Barely three months into his term and the unimaginable has become reality.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers, including his supporters, out of work due to the handiwork of DOGE.
Institutions caving to the administration’s inane demands, funding for a wide swatch of programs held up or terminated, a trade war the likes we have never seen, market decimation, and our global reputation in tatters.
People being disappeared from communities without due process, the administration openly defying court orders, lawmakers fearing for their lives.
Trump has become both a mob boss and dictator rolled into one and appears omnipotent as our systems of checks and balances prove either unable or unwilling to stop him.
As a result of the mayhem and deconstruction, millions of Americans in recent weeks have taken to the streets. Millions who never in their lives have attended a protest because until this moment, they never felt moved enough to do so—because honestly, the system worked for them. This isn’t a judgment; it is a statement of fact and observation.
At the same time, millions who have protested in the past are sitting out this cycle of protests, unsure of their safety and feeling gutted that their (our) voices weren’t heard all those times before over so many years—decades in fact. Instead they’re mulling over how to survive this administration while feeling that white people let them down (or straight and cishet people in the case of a lot of LGBTQ+ people). Trust across racial lines is particularly low, and how could it not be? This moment reveals that all the so-called progress across racial lines was superficial at best. The mistrust and tensions are real, and it is going to take a lot of intentional work for race relations to move forward.
However, now we are all in the burning house and the truth is our collective survival is at stake. For better or worse, the need to work together across groups is higher than it has ever been.
But it is also not happening.
As the protests that we have seen in recent weeks reveal, there is a deep disconnect in how we even fight for our survival, or so it seems. Or are the limitations of media and social media creating narratives that aren’t exactly accurate and inflaming tensions?
Like many Black women, I have chosen to sit out the protests. In my case, my work already puts me at risk with this administration and I don’t need to be in the streets, especially when I am doing work behind the scenes.
This weekend though, I unexpectedly found myself at a local protest and I was actually surprised by what I witnessed. It wasn’t quite the narrative that has been popular in certain spaces of white people showing up and treating protests as social gatherings.
On 4/19, a day of widespread protests across the country, I was on the mainland in Portland, Maine, at the same time as the local protest in Maine’s largest city. I was in town for an appointment and had time to spare, I went to grab a beverage and ended up down the street from the action. Having time to kill, I decided to walk over and check things out.
The crowd was predominantly white; then again, this is Maine, one of the whitest states in the country (though we have become more diverse in recent years). I saw folks marching in the streets. I saw folks filling the sidewalks and one of the city’s squares. In my 23 years in Maine, I have attended a number of protests in Portland and frankly, even at the height of the BLM movement, I had never seen this many people come out.
I saw a wide array of signs: some witty, some cute, and some basic. Upon first glance, the scene looked identical to what I had seen online from protests across the country. White folks out on a Saturday afternoon, not quite disrupting the status quo—though with a march on the streets and on sidewalks, traffic on the first warm day of the season was definitely being interrupted and it was an interesting mixture of people outside. Tourists, the unhoused community, and protest attendees.
Then I realized there was speaker on a bullhorn and I walked in the direction of the bullhorn, where I listened to speaker talk about the need to engage in mutual aid around food security especially because Portland’s immigrant community and others were being impacted by Trump’s actions. The speaker asked people to sign up to support their local food banks and pantries and to get involved locally. At this point, I was short on time and needed to hurry to my appointment but not before I saw a group tabling near the speaker. Plenty of people were standing near the area of the speaker and I sensed that people were hearing the message about the need to look out for one another and work at the micro/local level.
I didn’t stay long but honestly, the overall vibe that I experienced was not quite as festive as the online commentary has made these protests out to be. I saw a few folks I knew, ranging from longtime local activists to people who I would almost certainly guess hadn’t been to a protest or action of any sort since their college days. The overall vibe was one of “We have work to do and if we are here, we might as well lean into it.”
I am writing this because discourse in some spaces has been heavy on the critiquing of how people are showing up and, well, increasingly I don’t think that type of critique is helpful—especially when we look at who is doing the showing up. As many marginalized and at-risk folks sit out more visible resistance for myriad reasons, it means that people new to this world are the ones showing up. It means people will need to find their way and learn about this world. We are seeing people who until three months ago lived relatively privileged lives without overt fear of their government who are now suddenly realizing what some of us have always known.
To expect average white Americans who maybe showed up in support of others before to suddenly start organizing hearty protests and disruptions on their own—often without guidance from more experienced organizers and particularly organizers of color who understand and the nuances of activism—is like expecting someone who is a cooking novice to go in the kitchen and whip up a six-course meal without a recipe and expect that meal to be on par with that of a James Beard Award-winning chef. Could it happen? Maybe, but the likelihood isn’t high and to expect that is to set oneself up for disappointment. Expecting people who have always had the system work for them to suddenly disrupt it out the gate isn’t reality, I am sorry to say.
Organizing is relational work and for many of the people going out in the streets at this time, they don’t have the relationships to guide or gather them. As such, their praxis is lacking. Doesn’t mean they can’t learn and grow but it does mean that online critiques that belittle folks isn’t going to cut it. That does nothing aside from venting frustration, and that won’t get us anywhere.
In the last few years, in my professional capacity, I have had to ponder why all the energy from the Black Lives Matter movement hasn’t held and it boils down to relationships. Too many relationships that formed, especially around the George Floyd era, were transactional and not based in any type of mutual desire to grow. Especially ones formed across racial lines. Too many white folks threw money at the cause, instead of throwing themselves into the cause, and it shows. People never moved beyond being an ally and, well, allies can be fickle. It’s why many BIPOC folks, me included, have seen white allies drop off, cancel support, and move on. It’s also why in my work both as BGIM and in my day job, I have become more focused on building relationships.
In the last month, I have spent more time in face-to-face meetings with organizers and activists than I have in years. Now more than ever, that connection is what is needed. Reading the work of someone will never be the same as being able to break bread or sharing tea with the person who writes that work and who wants to be an accomplice in the work.
When we are in relationship with one another, we are building trust that allows for honest feedback, guidance, and direction. It’s why local work matters; it allows us to develop our relationships. We are facing many unknowns but now more than ever, we will need one another and the only way to make that happen is with relationships rooted in trust that allow for mistakes and growth.
I also recognize it is hard, historically. The majority of white people haven’t shown up for Black folks and other marginalized folks. So, the instinct to judge and assume bad or inauthentic intentions is justified, but we also have never faced a collective threat as we do with the Trump administration. We come to this moment with fear and distrust, but for a shared desire for survival. Let that be our starting point as we find where we fit in and do our best, all the while remembering that grace and patience will also be a part of this journey.
Personally, I could choose to sit in anger about who didn’t do what earlier, but ultimately that won’t save us. Instead this moment can be a catalyst for change if we can hold multiple truths including the fact that for many, privilege blinded them from seeing real threats and realizing that repairing the harm done will need to be part of our organizing efforts.
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Image by Nick Fewings via Unaplsah
