The official end of Jim Crow in the United States happened between 1965 and 1968. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in 1965, they passed the Voting Rights Act, and then in 1968, the Fair Housing Act. These efforts effectively ended Jim Crow in the United States, though the lingering racial animosity persisted.
As someone with a parent who was born and raised under Jim Crow in the deep South, I grew up hearing a lot about the impact of Jim Crow. How America’s racist laws and deeply entrenched racism impacted my father’s life, from being denied educational and career opportunities to the lived reality of no generational wealth because of that denial of humanity due to the color of my father’s skin.
Though it really wasn’t until my 30s and relocating and settling in Maine that it really dawned on me how Jim Crow had impacted our lives and how I was also the first generation of our family to truly live free in this country. Able to access the education and career opportunities of my choosing and able to not live in abject fear because of the color of my skin. Generation X is truly the first generation of Black people born free and while we still dealt with our share of racism growing up, it was nothing like what our parents and elders dealt with. Gen X is now 45 to 60 years old. I am 52 and we are literally living during the great white takeover, and we aren’t really talking enough about it. It’s a reversal of all that we won in the 1960s—a movement to put us “back in our places.” The United States government is putting out propaganda on a regular basis that clearly articulates their desires for a white America and the best we are doing as a collective is sharing the news and discussing how gross it is.
Not long ago, the Trump administration announced it was going to be drastically decreasing the number of asylum seekers to 7,500 over the next year, the majority of whom would be white South Africans (Afrikaners), who are hardly people fleeing persecution. They are the descendants of colonizers who don’t want to play on an even playing field now that apartheid is over and who see their whiteness above the humanity of everyone else. In other words, Trump and Company kind of people.
In recent years, Maine has become home to a number of asylum seekers who have mostly come the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Somalia, and other countries experiencing war and armed conflict. Several days ago, it was reported that we will be receiving 50 of these Afrikaners—a shift from recent years where refugees of color have played a huge role in diversifying a state that has long held the unfortunate title of being the whitest state in the country. In my two decades here, Maine’s white population has decreased by 2.2 percent, while our populations of color have increased in return. While we still are very much the whitest state in the country, the diversity—especially in our more urban populations—has added texture to the richness to our state.
Trump’s immigration policies, along with his virulent disdain for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, are taking a wrecking ball to whatever racial progress we thought we had made and, in many ways, if one understands the structural nature of racism, it isn’t hard to understand how we got here. Our structures weren’t sturdy. A system is only as good as the people involved in the system and at the end of the day, not enough white people unlearned the racism that is inherent in our society by their existence in white bodies. You change the laws, but if you don’t change the hearts and souls of those who will be running those systems, you will eventually have the type of racism that is once again becoming normalized in the United States.
Just as I sat down to write this piece, I came across an article from the Boston University student newspaper, talking about how the president of the Boston University College Republicans group, a young white man, shared on the Twitter/X platform that he called ICE to investigate the Allston Car Wash, which resulted in an ICE raid—one of the largest in the area. While several workers were detained, it turned out they all were legally authorized to work in this country.
A young white college student—daresay, a privileged young white man—was so incensed by the presence of people unlike himself that he sought to harm them, based on his racist assumptions.
The online response seems to be either he was a patriot or he is a racist numbnut and this will eventually blow back on him. Will it? At the rate we are going, I will wager the odds are this won’t harm this young white man in any way. In fact, when left-of-center white people downplay racism to being the purview of those “other white people” who are “bad and racist.” it reveals the laziness of many white people who consider themselves to be anti-racist.
Racism and racial bias and racial attacks are quickly becoming normalized and not enough people are being realistic in acknowledging it, much less doing anything to neutralize it. A racial analysis and framework that makes you as an individual anti-racist doesn’t do anything unless you use that power and knowledge to shift the racist systems.
A recent story in Maine of a school principal attending a private family Halloween party dressed as an ICE agent and coming under fire for his personal decision is a reminder of how few of us who hold explicitly anti-racist views are in positions of power. James Black is currently suspended as the school board decides what to do with him; however, I have heard from people in his community that his choice of costume is absolutely a reflection of who he is and the values he holds. Which begs the question: How was he hired and what are the values of the people who hired him or, in this case, will decide his fate?
Too many of us who purport to be anti-racist spend way too much time unpacking and thinking and not enough time doing or moving ourselves into positions of power. Not long after Trump won in 2016, I started advocating that more of us needed to take a page out of the GOP’s playbook and start getting into positions of power, whether it was the school board, city council, state houses or even the official dog catcher. We need to build power. While there are certainly groups that have worked hard to do that, such as Emerge, there aren’t enough. Sometimes you just have do the thing—it was that thinking that led to my own run for local office in 2021. Yes, I was approached by someone to run, but ultimately, I decided that if I was telling other people to get involved, that I needed to be willing to do it myself. Don’t tell other people to do what you aren’t willing to do.
In recent years, it has become the thing to support folks of color in these positions but given the state of the country where visible and vocal people of color literally are being targeted, this is where white folks need to stand up and walk in the spirit of a John Brown. Or Anne Braden. This is when white people knowing the stories of white people who fought for racial justice is far more beneficial than reading the work of a Black or Brown person. You need to see yourself in the struggle.
Since July, when it was reported that over 300,000 Black women had effectively been put out of work due to the Trump administration, it has been known that Black folks in addition to the Latino community were being targeted and continue to be targeted. And while there are white folks taking stands in their communities, from white suburban Chicago moms getting arrested outside the ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, to those working to fill food boxes for immigrants too scared to leave their houses, and it’s beautiful to see, it isn’t enough. Right now, we need a more broad-based organizing approach that seeks to build with white folks who may not be natural allies. However, this building is not the work of BIPOC people at this time; it is the work of white people to bridge the gaps with white people whose views they don’t share but who can be moved. It is uncomfortable work, but we can’t continue to leave Uncle Rusty the racist behind to continue to be indoctrinated by a side that accepts all comers, while we are selective and at times performative.
Your racial justice work must now level up, beyond the reading and safe activities to take risks and get uncomfortable. We aren’t far removed from a world where we may very well once again see “whites-only” publicly. I mean, the administration isn’t hiding their plans—even our military will see an eventual purging of Black men and others of color with Whisky Keg’s follicular facial rules.
Even who can drive commercial trucks is increasingly being relegated to whites only. An emergency order issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in late September limits the eligibility of a commercial driver’s license to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and non-citizens holding one of three specific visas. This means that immigrants who have work authorization but not one of the three specific visas will no longer be able to acquire a CDL.
In Maine, the impact will be felt because in addition to being the whitest state, we are also the state with the oldest population and immigrants have been playing a vital role in our economy, as we don’t have enough people for many jobs in this state. A point that is often missed by Maine’s right-wing rag, the Maine Wire and people who believe that immigrants are taking their jobs. No, Scott, no one is taking your job driving the truck, cleaning the motel rooms, or picking blueberries. Seems that even in a state overflowing with white people, white people don’t want certain jobs.
In today’s silos of media, we are overwhelmed because news is coming at us nonstop and it is hard to catch our breath and zoom out from the breaking story of the moment. But to know where to put our efforts, we must be able to see the larger picture. Even as I write this and everyone is abuzz after the Republicans released over 200,000 pieces of correspondence from the dead pedophile and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, we need to remember that even if Trump were suddenly not in office, the great white man takeover will still move forward, because guys like Stephen Miller are the ones doing the work. While my angle is often race, let’s not forget that these ghouls want to essentially harm all of us who don’t fit their vision of what America should be, and ultimately the liberation of Black and Brown people secures our collective liberation.
So, start thinking about what more you can do, and what talents you do have, so you can play the long game of liberation.
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