Growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s as a Black girl, life wasn’t easy, as my parents intentionally chose to live in a way that meant financial scarcity. Aside from the brief years my father spent in law enforcement, that scarcity was a constant backdrop of our lives. Over the years, as an adult, I have come to realize that what we lacked in material items, we made up for with love, care, and grounding. That my parents’ greatest legacy was instilling in both me and my brother a sense that while life will always have challenges as Black folks, we could never allow ourselves to be defined by the challenges; instead, as my late cousin used to say, what is this talk of cannot do?
I have been thinking a lot about those words as I watch our nation spiral into an overtly nasty and cruel place under the guidance of Donald Trump, who is taking us backwards in ways that a year ago were unimaginable to many Americans. As I recently wrote, there is no doubt that making America great again is about restoring the “golden era” of America, where white men were in charge and the rest of us lived under their thumb. Lest you still think I am dramatic, even The New York Times is starting to acknowledge that Trump’s way forward is about going in reverse by about a century. Trump wants the America of his youth and, at 79, that is an America that many of us have only read about but are starting to understand.
It is a place that many of us never experienced but a place that many white Americans apparently yearn for as they believe that cultural change and diversity has stolen from them.
In recent weeks, we have watched this administration ramp up its cruelty with the installation of the concentration camp in the Florida Everglades that they call Alligator Alcatraz and critics with a sense of history are calling Alligator Auschwitz. But make no mistake, “cutesy” names aside, it’s a concentration camp. Something we’ve had before when we imprisoned Japanese-American citizens during World War II—a cruelty then but something worse now in the middle of a swamp in hurricane country, where people will quite likely die in large numbers. A place that Democratic lawmakers just visited and described as inhumane and a place where human rights violations are the new norm, on U.S. soil. Millions of Americans cheer on this cruelty with the most degrading memes and comments; our so-called president cheers on this cruelty from his media platform and proclaims he is keeping us safe as his henchpeople echo his words of dehumanization, while carrying out orders.
We see steady coverage of people being kidnapped by masked men in unmarked cars who refuse to identify themselves, who—as the pressure mounts to meet their daily quotas of kidnapping—are becoming more brutal and savage in their actions. Tackling people in Walmarts, roughing up people in medical facilities. Farm workers running with their families in fear in fields.
This steady stream of violence and vitriol is designed to keep us in a constant state of fear as we all worry about our safety and well-being. In communities that ICE is targeting people, elected officials are warning people to stay indoors.
Helpless and frustrated, many turn to social media or trusted circles to share how helpless they feel and lamenting that they can’t do more, while being overwhelmed by fear.
Friends, this is where they want us, and the truth is, while we may be scared, we are not helpless. It has been said that this administration is using the Nazi playbook, but their playbook was in turn based in part on the racist practices of the Jim Crow South. If we look at how this country has historically treated Black and Indigenous people, along with other non-white people, and we look to their fight for freedom and rights, we start to see the blueprint for how we must move forward.
Moving forward starts with mustering up courage and strength and accepting that this battle is a long game. It starts with understanding that we aren’t the first to be in this situation, but we might be the first to allow a crazed strongman to take over our country without serious resistance in such a short period of time. Trump is accomplishing in record time what it took autocrats like Viktor Orban and Hugo Chavez years to accomplish. We are being fast-tracked to autocracy with little in the way of resistance in part because we are scared, overwhelmed, and the norms of whiteness keep many of us thinking someone else is going to save us and politeness will win out. I am sorry to say, but the resistance requires an army of Karens to question and resist.
Part of our feelings of being overwhelmed start with the fact that we being terrorized on a daily basis and the handheld devices that are seemingly a critical part of modern day lives are not as helpful as we think they are. The line between being informed and being overwhelmed is a fine one and right now, the daily doomscroll that has become part of our lives is preventing us from building in meaningful ways.
We log on and ask when the next protest is instead of planning it ourselves. Technology has us making plans on the same platforms owned by the people in cahoots with this autocrat and his band of misfits. We rely on technology and seek answers when sometimes, just gathering and being willing to make mistakes would be more beneficial.
Modern-day life has turned us into passive consumers and documenters of life rather than people willing to jump in the fray and take a risk. Modern-day life has made us so afraid of missing work for fear that we will lose what little we do have that we lose sight of the larger picture for ourselves and generations to come. When I think back to the people who launched what would become the modern-day Civil Rights movement, I am reminded that these people organized at time when, as Black people, they knew they were risking their literal lives. They organized at a time when a white person’s words could literally lead to their death and when they still weren’t seen as fully human.
My grandfather spoke up to a white man who lusted after one of my then-teenage aunts and it cost him his livelihood. My grandparents were forced off the farm they had been sharecropping because he dared to protect one of his children; because it was the right thing to do. I hardly think my grandfather was exceptional. He just knew what was right and that a white man feeling entitled to one of his children because he was a white man wasn’t okay.
Losing his livelihood and the only home he and my grandmother and their kids, including my father, had ever known was a small price to pay considering what could have happened. The road to the Civil Rights gains that we thought would never be reversed started with the courage of men and women like my grandfather, who understood that things weren’t going to change under Jim Crow without resistance and a willingness to take risks and to understand that those risks could range from loss of income to loss of freedoms or even the loss of one’s life.
The success of the Montgomery boycott was rooted in a collective mindset that provided alternatives to taking those buses—a mindset rooted in the collective and not the individual, Mutual aid and care.
Our ability to resist will require a shift in our mindset and turning toward collective care and community—to understand that we win when we come together and take risks, and when we assess who in our community can take more risks and position ourselves accordingly. When we realize that the powers to be have created a world where the very nature of modern life is to feel overwhelmed and powerless. The sudden embrace of AI is in part because it saves time and, well, we are overwhelmed. The world we are living in keeps us too busy for deep connections and thinking, but who benefits when we are overwhelmed and scared? It’s not us. When we are too busy to read for depth and connection and too busy or scared of one another, it only helps the powers-that-be who wish to dehumanize us.
Finding our power involves building together and that is what they fear. They fear us coming together. We know these people are scared. It’s why GOP elected officials refuse to meet constituents for fear of critique; it is why the kidnappers are masked. Their entire apparatus under Trump has been built on exploiting fears. They built a literal autocrat by using fear to drive change and they are keeping us subdued by fear of being harmed or losing jobs and more to keep us under their thumb. At the rate we are going, individual jobs won’t do us much good if they keep gaining ground. These fears are literally creating a learned helplessness that prevents us from doing more than the bare minimum to resist and, thus far, our resistance isn’t doing much to rattle them.
Life has always had challenges. We all have personal challenges. Some of us come to this moment with more challenges than others, but we are stronger together and together we can do hard things. We can do more than what we are doing. This moment requires as much as we can give. This moment requires realizing that whatever privileges you do hold are not paying the dividends they once did. This moment requires seeing the same humanity we see in ourselves in others. We are living in a country where lawmakers are killed due to political ideology and the self-absorbed guy in charge can’t even be bothered to acknowledge that tragedy. Every one of us who cares about truth, justice, and equity is at risk now, not just Black and brown people. Just this weekend, our “dear leader” got on his platform and stated he wants to strip comedian Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship. Her crime? Not kissing the ring and criticizing him. Legally, stripping away her citizenship isn’t likely but in this new upside-down world filled with spineless yes-people, who knows?
Too many people fear this guy and any hope we have for ourselves and future generations depends on not surrendering to those fears. So, start thinking about how you can move past your fear and how you can reclaim your peace of mind and be proactive despite the real threats this administration poses to all of us.
Think about the ones who came before us, whose shoulders we stand on. Become the people on whose shoulders others can stand.
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