Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
Welcome to our YouTube channel, "Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. TV.
Like and subscribe to make these videos widely available. Thank you!! Get ready for short, insightful videos highlighting his groundbreaking work on race, democracy, and American society. From bestselling books like "Democracy in Black" to his thought-provoking commentary on platforms like MSNBC and TIME Magazine, Dr. Glaude challenges us to confront our history and envision a better future. Join us as we explore his powerful ideas and engage in thought-provoking conversations about the American experience.
Dr. Glaude's new book America, U.S.A.:How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversariesdrops May 26, 2026
Joy-Ann Lomena Reid (AKA Joy Reid) is a best-selling American author, political journalist and TV host. She was a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the Emmy-nominated, NAACP Award-winning political commentary and analysis show, The ReidOut, from 2020 to 2025. Her previous anchoring credits include The Reid Report (2014–2015) and AM Joy (2016–2020).
In this TJRS show segment, Joy Reid breaks down how the Republican party is literally waging war on black Americans — from Tennessee to Mississippi to Louisiana. They're eliminating majority black congressional districts, voting in old Confederate courthouses, and using the gutted Voting Rights Act to steal elections. But black leaders aren't taking it lying down. State Representative Justin J. Pearson delivered a fiery floor speech invoking the blood shed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And Justin Jones burned a Confederate flag on the Capitol steps, telling the modern-day klan, "We are still here." The South will not rise again.
0:00 The GOP Is Waging War on Black Americans 1:11 Protesters Fight Back in the Streets 2:17 Justin Jones Burns the Confederate Flag 2:52 Justin J. Pearson Faces Down Law Enforcement 5:44 Mississippi to Vote in an Old Confederate Courthouse 7:33 Justin J. Pearson's Full Floor Speech on White Supremacy 11:54 "We Are Still Here" The Ancestors' Message 13:34 Justin Jones After the Capitol Klan Rally 16:59 Civil Rights Leaders Are Organizing a Response
ABOUT JOY REID:
Joy-Ann Lomena Reid (AKA Joy Reid) is a best-selling American author, political journalist and TV host. She was a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the Emmy-nominated, NAACP Award-winning political commentary and analysis show, The ReidOut, from 2020 to 2025. Her previous anchoring credits include The Reid Report (2014–2015) and AM Joy (2016–2020).
The Relentless Ongoing White Supremacist WAR on the Civil, Human, and Constitutional rights of Black American Citizens by the Deadly Fascist Trump Administrative Regime And the Grave Necessity of A Massive National Struggle Against These Forces "Here we are...The Trump administration is clearly pursuing a white nationalist agenda. That agenda stands alongside other efforts, including his grift. And I want you to always remember that at the heart of this problem is the toxic combination of greed, selfishness, and hatred. And we can combine those policy initiatives and outcomes with other policy initiatives and outcomes to show that this ain't about [the price of] eggs yall. It never was..."
--Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr.
Weekly Wrap Up by Eddie Glaude,Jr. May 9, 2025 Substack
In this week’s recap, Eddie discusses various pressing issues, including the selection of Pope Leo XIV, the humanitarian crisis in Israel and Gaza, U.S. immigration policies, economic challenges under the Trump administration, and the implications of recent executive orders on civil rights. He emphasizes the need for consistent critique of policies regardless of political affiliation and calls for a more imaginative approach to activism in the face of systemic injustices.
'The line has been crossed': Eddie Glaude Jr. responds to Mayor Baraka's arrest
MSNBC political analyst and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. responds to the arrest of Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka at an ICE detention center he'd been protesting. "The line has been crossed. The state has evidenced its willingness to exercise power in this coercive way, and it doesn't matter if you're an elected official or a woman holding your child."
For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day click here: https://www.msnbc.com/
The Latest on the Trump Administration:
Legal Tool Key to Civil Rights Enforcement: President Trump has ordered federal agencies to halt their use of “disparate-impact liability,” which has been used to assess whether policies discriminate against different groups.
Trump and the G.O.P. Money World: The president is harnessing the Republican Party’s all-encompassing deference to him to exert even greater control over the G.O.P. big-money world, which had long been one of the party’s final remaining redoubts of Trump skepticism.
White Afrikaners as Refugees: Although the president halted virtually all other refugee admissions shortly after he took office, the Trump administration is planning to bring the first group of white South Africans it has classified as refugees to the United States, according to officials briefed on the plans and documents obtained by the Times.
Holocaust Museum and Trump Firings: Board members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum argued over email after a Biden appointee sent a scathing letter invoking the Holocaust as he denounced the museum’s silence on Trump’s firings of board members.
Trump Seeks to Strip Away Legal Tool Key to Civil Rights Enforcement
President Trump has ordered federal agencies to halt their use of “disparate-impact liability,” which has been used to assess whether policies discriminate against different groups.
President
Trump has undertaken an aggressive effort to purge the consideration of
diversity, equity and inclusion from the federal government and every
facet of American life. Credit: Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Reporting from Washington May 9, 2025 New York Times
President Trump has ordered federal agencies to abandon the use of a longstanding legal tool used to root out discrimination against minorities, a move that could defang the nation’s bedrock civil rights law.
In an expansive executive order, Mr. Trump directed the federal government to curtail the use of “disparate-impact liability,” a core tenet used for decades to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by determining whether policies disproportionately disadvantage certain groups.
The little-noticed order, issued last month with a spate of others targeting equity policies, was the latest effort in Mr. Trump’s aggressive push to purge the consideration of diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., from the federal government and every facet of American life.
The directive underscores how Mr. Trump’s crusade to stamp out D.E.I. — a catchall term increasingly used to describe policies that benefit anyone who is not white and male — is now focused not just on targeting programs and policies that may assist historically marginalized groups, but also on the very law created to protect them.
“This order aims to destroy the foundation of civil rights protections in this country, and it will have a devastating effect on equity for Black people and other communities of color,” said Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group.
Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Civil rights advocates say Mr. Trump is trying to effectively gut anti-discrimination laws by fiat. Credit: Joy Asico-Smith/AP Images for Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights
The disparate-impact test has been crucial to enforcing key portions of the landmark Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color or national origin. For decades, it has been relied upon by the government and attorneys to root out discrimination in areas of employment, housing, policing, education and more.
Civil rights prosecutors say the disparate-impact test is one of their most important tools for uncovering discrimination because it shows how a seemingly neutral policy or law has different outcomes for different demographic groups, revealing inequities.
Lawyers say the test has been crucial in showing how criminal background and credit checks affect employment of Black people, how physical capacity tests inhibit employment opportunities for women, how zoning regulations could violate fair housing laws, and how schools have meted out overly harsh discipline to minority students and children with disabilities.
Over the last decade, major businesses and organizations have settled cases in which the disparate-impact test was applied, resulting in significant policy changes.
One of the largest settlements involved Walmart, which in 2020 agreed to a $20 million settlement in a case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that claimed the company’s practice of giving physical ability tests to applicants for certain grocery warehouse jobs made it more difficult for women to get the positions.
The use of the disparate-impact rule, however, has also long been a target of conservatives who say that employers and other entities should not be scrutinized and penalized for the mere implication of discrimination, based largely on statistics. Instead, they argue that such scrutiny should be directed at the explicit and intentional discrimination prohibited by the Civil Rights Act.
Opponents say that that disparate-impact rule has been used to unfairly discriminate against white people. In 2009, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who claimed reverse discrimination when the city threw out a promotional examination on which they had scored better than Black firefighters.
The new order, titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” echoes arguments that Mr. Trump has adopted from far-right conservatives, who say that the country has become too focused on its racist history, and that protections from the civil rights era have led to reverse racism against nonminority groups.
Disparate-impact liability is part of “a pernicious movement” that seeks to “transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort or achievement,” the order stated.
The president ordered federal agencies to “eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible,” under the law and Constitution, and required that agencies “deprioritize enforcement of all statutes and regulations to the extent they include disparate-impact liability.”
That means that no new cases are likely to rely on the theory in civil rights enforcement — and existing ones will not be enforced.
His order also instructs agencies to evaluate existing consent judgments and permanent injunctions that rely on the legal theory, which means that cases and agreements in which discrimination has been proved could be abandoned.
The order takes aim directly at the use of the test in enforcing the Civil Rights Act, requiring Attorney General Pam Bondi to begin repealing and amending any regulations that apply disparate-impact liability to implement the 1964 law.
Attorney General Pam Bondi will be required to begin repealing and amending any regulations that apply disparate-impact liability to the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Credit: Pete Marovich for The New York Times
One of the most glaring examples in history of how seemingly race-neutral policies could disenfranchise certain groups are Jim Crow-era literacy tests, which some states set as a condition to vote after Black people secured rights during Reconstruction.
The literacy tests did not ask about race, but were highly subjective in how they were written and administered by white proctors. They disproportionately prevented Black people from casting ballots, including many who had received an inferior education in segregated schools, and were eventually outlawed with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1971, the Supreme Court established the disparate-impact test in a case that centered on a North Carolina power plant that required job applicants to have a high school diploma and pass an intelligence test to be hired or transferred to a higher-paying department. The court ruled unanimously that the company’s requirements violated the Civil Rights Act because they limited the promotion of minorities and did not measure job capabilities.
Mr. Trump’s executive order, which is likely to face legal challenges, falsely claimed that the disparate-impact test was “unlawful” and violated the Constitution. In fact, the measure was codified by Congress in 1991, upheld by the Supreme Court as recently as 2015 as a vital tool in the work of protecting civil rights, and cited in a December 2024 dissent by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said the disparate impact theory “wrongly equates unequal outcomes with discrimination and actually requires discrimination to rebalance outcomes.”
”The Trump administration is dedicated to advancing equality, combating discrimination and promoting merit-based decisions, upholding the rule of law as outlined in the U.S. Constitution,” Mr. Fields said.
GianCarlo Canaparo, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has argued that eliminating disparate impact would be the final blow to D.E.I., noted that Mr. Trump would need the help of Congress to fully eradicate the rule.
But he said the president’s order would still have a “salutary” impact on the American public by helping people understand that racial animus and disparate outcomes “are not the same things, and they shouldn’t be treated the same way in law.”
“These claims that racial discrimination is the sole cause of racial disparities in this country is just empirically false,” Mr. Canaparo said. “The problem with disparate-impact liability is that it presumes that falsehood is true, and accordingly distorts civil rights.”
Mr. Trump’s order contends that businesses and employers face an “insurmountable” task of proving they did not intend to discriminate when there are different outcomes for different groups, and that disparate impact forced them to ”engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.”
Catherine E. Lhamon, who served as the head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., disputed that. Her office conducted several disparate-impact investigations that found no intentional wrongdoing, she said.
“It’s a rigorous test,” Ms. Lhamon said, “and sometimes it proves discrimination and sometimes it doesn’t.”
In one case, the office examined large disparities in the rates of Native American students being disciplined, particularly for truancy, compared with their white peers in the Rapid City Area Schools in South Dakota. In the course of the investigation, the school superintendent attributed the tardiness of Native American students to “Indian Time,” the Education Department report stated. The superintendent later apologized and was fired.
Last year, the school district agreed to make changes to its practices as part of a voluntary resolution agreement with the Education Department. The Trump administration abruptly ended that agreement in April, citing the president’s directives to eliminate race-conscious policies.
The Justice Department has also long relied on the theory to identify patterns of police misconduct and other discrimination pervasive in communities of color. In 2018, the department helped secure a settlement and a consent decree with the City of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Fire Department after finding that Black firefighters were blocked from promotions because of a test that did not prove necessary for the fire department’s operations.
Now the Justice Department’s embattled civil rights division has halted the use of disparate-impact investigations altogether, officials said.
In an interview last month, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, praised the executive order for rolling back what she called “a very discredited” theory that “should be overruled.”
“We’re not in that business anymore, pursuant to the executive order,” she told the conservative podcast host Glenn Beck.
She went on to suggest that the level of discrimination that spurred civil rights laws no longer existed. “It’s 2025, today,” she said, “and the idea that some police department or some big employer can be sued because of statistics, which can be manipulated, is ludicrous and it is unfair.”
PHOTO: Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, praised Mr. Trump’s executive order for rolling back what she called “a very discredited" theory. Credit: Ken Cedeno/Reuters
Civil rights advocates say Mr. Trump is trying to effectively gut anti-discrimination laws by fiat.
Ms. Rodriguez, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said disparate impact had become a crucial guardrail for “ensuring that there are no artificial barriers that are limiting equal access to economic opportunity in every facet of our daily life.” The test helps root out discrimination that many people may not realize is constraining their opportunities, she added.
“The impact of this,” Ms. Rodriguez said of Mr. Trump’s order, “cannot be overstated.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent, covering President Trump and his administration.
A version of this article appears in print on May 11, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Curtails Legal Tool That Enforces Civil Rights. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.
But a pernicious movement endangers this foundational principle, seeking to transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort, or achievement. A key tool of this movement is disparate-impact liability, which holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability. It not only undermines our national values, but also runs contrary to equal protection under the law and, therefore, violates our Constitution.
On a practical level, disparate-impact liability has hindered businesses from making hiring and other employment decisions based on merit and skill, their needs, or the needs of their customers because of the specter that such a process might lead to disparate outcomes, and thus disparate-impact lawsuits. This has made it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for employers to use bona fide job-oriented evaluations when recruiting, which prevents job seekers from being paired with jobs to which their skills are most suited — in other words, it deprives them of opportunities for success. Because of disparate-impact liability, employers cannot act in the best interests of the job applicant, the employer, and the American public.
Disparate-impact liability imperils the effectiveness of civil rights laws by mandating, rather than proscribing, discrimination. As the Supreme Court put it, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Disparate-impact liability is wholly inconsistent with the Constitution and threatens the commitment to merit and equality of opportunity that forms the foundation of the American Dream. Under my Administration, citizens will be treated equally before the law and as individuals, not consigned to a certain fate based on their immutable characteristics.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.
Sec 3. Revoking Certain Presidential Actions. The following Presidential approvals of the regulations promulgated under 42 U.S.C. 2000d-1 are hereby revoked:
(a) the Presidential approval of July 25, 1966, of the Department of Justice Title VI regulations (31 Fed. Reg. 10269), as applied to 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(2) in full; and
(b) the Presidential approval of July 5, 1973, of the Department of Justice Title VI regulations (38 Fed. Reg. 17955, FR Doc. 73-13407), as applied to the words “or effect” in both places they appear in 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(3), and as applied to 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(6)(ii) and 28 C.F.R. 42.104(c)(2) in full.
Sec. 4. Enforcement Discretion to Ensure Lawful Governance. Given the limited enforcement resources of executive departments and agencies (agencies), the unlawfulness of disparate-impact liability, and the policy of this order, all agencies shall deprioritize enforcement of all statutes and regulations to the extent they include disparate-impact liability, including but not limited to 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2, 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(2)–(3), 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(6)(ii), and 28 C.F.R. 42.104(c)(2).
Sec. 5. Existing Regulations. (a) As delegated by Executive Order 12250 of November 2, 1980 (Leadership and Coordination of Nondiscrimination Laws), the Attorney General shall initiate appropriate action to repeal or amend the implementing regulations for Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for all agencies to the extent they contemplate disparate-impact liability.
(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General, in coordination with the heads of all other agencies, shall report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy:
(i) all existing regulations, guidance, rules, or orders that impose disparate-impact liability or similar requirements, and detail agency steps for their amendment or repeal, as appropriate under applicable law; and
(ii) other laws or decisions, including at the State level, that impose disparate-impact liability and any appropriate measures to address any constitutional or other legal infirmities.
Sec. 6. Review of Current Matters. (a) Within 45 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shall assess all pending investigations, civil suits, or positions taken in ongoing matters under every Federal civil rights law within their respective jurisdictions, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that rely on a theory of disparate-impact liability, and shall take appropriate action with respect to such matters consistent with the policy of this order.
(b) Within 45 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and the heads of other agencies responsible for enforcement of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Public Law 93-495), Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the Fair Housing Act (Public Law 90-284, as amended)), or laws prohibiting unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices shall evaluate all pending proceedings that rely on theories of disparate-impact liability and take appropriate action with respect to such matters consistent with the policy of this order.
(c) Within 90 days of the date of this order, all agencies shall evaluate existing consent judgments and permanent injunctions that rely on theories of disparate-impact liability and take appropriate action with respect to such matters consistent with the policy of this order.
Sec. 7. Future Agency Action. (a) In coordination with other agencies, the Attorney General shall determine whether any Federal authorities preempt State laws, regulations, policies, or practices that impose disparate-impact liability based on a federally protected characteristic such as race, sex, or age, or whether such laws, regulations, policies, or practices have constitutional infirmities that warrant Federal action, and shall take appropriate measures consistent with the policy of this order.
(b) The Attorney General and the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shall jointly formulate and issue guidance or technical assistance to employers regarding appropriate methods to promote equal access to employment regardless of whether an applicant has a college education, where appropriate.
Sec. 8. Severability. If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any individual or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its other provisions to any other individuals or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.
Sec. 9. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
DONALD J. TRUMP THE WHITE HOUSE April 23, 2025
Fired Librarian of Congress on losing history during Trump 2.0:
Just days before she was fired by President Trump, Carla Hayden - the first woman and the first African American to serve as the Librarian of Congress - warned about the risk of losing important parts of U.S. history. Hayden and Noelle Trent, the head of Boston's Museum of African American History, spoke with GBH News Rooted Host Paris Alston about their efforts to preserve Black history.
00:00 What's at risk? Loss of more complete picture of people of this country; blind to context and what can happen in future 2:00 Hayden's historic term and finishing it out 8:00 Removing exhibits? 9:00 How much museums actually display 1100 Museums reassessing how business is done 13:50 Preserving history
Trump Administration Actions Against Black Americans Have Deep Historical Roots by Catalina Gonzalez, Rachel Mayo March 6, 2025 Center for Progressive Reform
It is no coincidence that since taking office on Martin Luther King Day, the Trump administration’s most aggressive actions have targeted historically marginalized groups. In fact, the many blatantly illegal, unconstitutional, and bizarre actions we saw during the first month of Trump 2.0 — during which we also observed National Black History Month — are specifically harmful to Black Americans. Attempts by Trump to freeze federal funding, close federal agencies, curb the rights of workers, and dismiss federal workers, through illegal means and by Republicans using budget reconciliation to cut federal funding for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food assistance, andpublic education, continue a shameful tradition in American history of systematically dehumanizing, disenfranchising, and stealing from Black Americans.
Why are Trump and his allies doing this? To further consolidate their wealth and might by dividing our collective power. This carefully planned spectacle is designed to shock, overwhelm, and divert our attention away from the extreme greed of the wealthy and powerful few, who are attempting to loot the banking and payment systems that fund public spending with our tax dollars.
In states across the country, the far-right is suppressing the real history of structural racism and Black progress at the same time that the new Trump regime is preparing to copy from that history directly — particularly its most violent chapters: Slavery, post-Reconstruction and racial segregation of the Jim Crow era, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, voter suppression, redlining, and police killings of Black Americans. In these periods, white Americans launched a hostile backlash against Black American progress. But the current administration’s aggression also harkens back to other violent and anti-democratic actions that the U.S. government and military have perpetrated on Indigenous people in North America and colonized people in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
A key feature of how this narrative operates is through cognitive dissonance and psychological terror. The ruling class, and the holders of the most wealth and property, have always been overwhelmingly disproportionately white, cisgender, Christian males — as are most CEOs, shareholders, and boards of directors — and it is this same small cohort who are attempting to further consolidate wealth and power. But while the full powers of structural violence and an authoritarian state are being unleashed against minorities and Black Americans, officials in the highest levels of the government are posting about Nazis and promoting the racist narrative that white, Christian males are the victims of a “woke” agenda and have been disenfranchised by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Trump built his political career with racist lies like these, beginning with allegations that President Obama was not born in the United States before spending several campaigns (and his presidency)disparaging Black Americans and their communities. Decades before that, in 1973, the federal government filed suit and won a case against Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for housing discrimination against Black tenants. Later in 1989, Trump also took out a full-page ad in multiple newspapers calling for the execution of Black and Latino teenagers who were under investigation for a crime for which they were wrongfully accused and exonerated. Now, Trump is attacking the modest gains made through affirmative action and purging workers from the federal workforce, who are disproportionately people of color.
Trump’s movement was fueled by very real discontent, but he scapegoated historically excluded groups instead of fixing any actual problems. While his wealthy supporters are getting exactly what they knowingly voted for, others were misled into misplacing their anger, fear, and resentment at groups facing similar systemic barriers rather than directing it to the wealthy classes who are directly responsible for it. These are tactics used by authoritarian and oppressive leaders and governments throughout modern history, from European fascism, to the Jim Crow South, to the authoritarian and autocratic regimes we see today in places like Russia, Hungary, and Belarus.
This is why Trump spent years disputing the outcome of the 2020 election and ginning up panic about election safety: to pave the way for policies that will further suppress and disenfranchise his political opponents, particularly Black voters and voters of color, who make up an increasingly large percentage of the electorate. Suppressing the collective political power of the Black community poses an immediate, dire risk for Black Americans, and the consequences will be felt by everyone in the working and middle classes.
The history of the environmental justice movement illustrates precisely how anti-Black racism is central to undermining American democracy. Decades ago, Black leaders and civil rights activists fought to stop truckloads of pollution from being dumped in their community of Warren County, North Carolina, kicking off what we now know as the environmental justice movement. The protections born from this movement benefit countless American communities — but especially Black Americans and communities of color — and have gone on to inform the climate justice movement that is attempting to save our planet.
But the Trump administration is reversing course on these gains and turbocharging resource extraction, fast-tracking dangerous pipelines and risky projects that predominantly go through rural, low-wealth, and/or communities of color. Many go through Black communities in the Gulf South, which are already overburdened with air pollution, cancer, and other diseases caused by the fossil fuel industry. A series of executive orders and initiatives denies Black communities from accessing public funding to participate in and benefit from the clean energy transition.
These orders — and others like them — cannot change laws or congressional spending, but they signal terrifying intentions to cut air and water protections, gut critical social services, lay off millions, and push more expenses onto already cost-burdened Black Americans, who already pay a larger share of their income on essentials like housing and utilities and are more likely than white Americans to be low-income renters. This is especially concerning in an era of increased climate-induced disasters, which disproportionately affect low-income and Black communities. Threats from the Trump administration to cut back federal resources for relief and recovery could likely mean that more Black households and communities will be displaced and lose generational wealth.
The throughline is a deliberate strategy to concentrate power and wealth by dismantling protections that took decades of hard-fought civil rights battles to achieve. From expanding fossil fuel projects in Black communities to rolling back protections for environmental justice communities, these efforts aim to protect and expand corporate interests at the expense of public health and safety. The administration’s deceitful fearmongering pits marginalized communities against one another in the hopes that we ignore an economic system that extracts resources from below and concentrates wealth at the top. For this system to work, its proponents must divide, distract, and disempower.
Standing up for justice and equity means calling out these injustices and continuing the fight for an inclusive, fair, and sustainable future for all Americans.
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."
"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."
Nina Simone (1933-2003)
"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)
"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
