On January 20, 2025, Martin Luther King Day no less, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States for the second time. I am sure that many people dreaded that day. I’m sure that many people wanted Kamala Harris to be the person inaugurated on that day. But the truth is that it is not to be her, but Donald Trump.
Quite naturally several people are upset and frankly scared for what is on the horizon during the second Trump presidency. I would never disregard or ignore the real fear that numerous communities have as we confront a second Trump presidency. But, as a person of faith, an educator, and a student, I would be remiss if I did not encourage people to have hope. One of the main reasons we can have hope, particularly as educators is because we can see and use history as our guide.
Again, I don’t mean to minimize the impact that can be had with a second Trump presidency, but this is not the first time that African Americans in particular have faced dangers in their government. Since our arrival on these shores, our experience in the settler colonial state has been precarious.
Our arrival was such that we were enslaved. For centuries, Africans were enslaved on Indigenous lands, stolen by white settlers who codified their sovereignty—by way of the gun—to make enslavement part and parcel of American society for the next 75 years.
We were “property;” according to the U.S. Constitution, not even a whole person. While it is true that the words “slave” or “slavery” didn’t appear in the text, enslavement is part of the text. There’s the importation clause, the insurrection clause, the fugitive slave clause, and the three-fifths clause that all express the government’s sanction of enslaving African bodies for profit.
Then suddenly, in the words of DuBois, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” First came the 13th Amendment, which didn’t eliminate enslavement. What followed were Black Codes; vagrancy laws, sharecropping, the Compromise of 1877, and the doctrine of Separate but Equal. Some could argue that we were right back where we started.
We were constantly under the thumb of white surveillance.
Our ancestors were lynched for the slightest transgression—their Blackness and mahogany skin were transgression enough to be lynched. Our soldiers fought for democracy around the world yet were greeted with racial animosity, race riots, and the knowledge that democracy wasn’t for them. Crosses were burnt on their yards, Green Books were necessary to avoid danger while traveling, and adolescent Black boys were murdered for not even whistling at a white woman.
Our ancestors were put in jail for protesting our rights. They were bitten by dogs, sprayed with water hoses, and adorned with condiments and coffee at restaurant counters. They were denied at the voting booth and denied at the school house and when those ancestors moved north and west, Jim Crow awaited them there.
When the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed, our parents and grandparents continued to face the evils of anti-Black racism. School districts were shut down to prevent them from attending schools with white children as many educators among those ancestors lost their jobs. New strategies were conceived to make racism as enslavement was in the constitution: heard but not seen. Such alterations precipitated the drug epidemic, crack cocaine sentencing disparities, crime bills, and mass incarceration.
Needless to say, Black folk have been through a lot. We’re likely to go through a lot more. But our history is one of resistance. Meaning, we fight back. We always have and another Trump era isn’t about to stop us from resisting.ant
During the period of enslavement, African Americans revolted and rebelled. They took freedom in their own hands, as was the case during their day-to-day existence. Their resistance spurred their liberation during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Black resistance is responsible for the Civil War, the Union’s victory, and the passage of the Reconstruction amendments.
During the Jim Crow era, Black people fought back.
Educators like Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Dr. W.E.B DuBois created institutions and organizations to speak the truth of history and speak the truth of America’s condition thereby sharing that truth with African-American educators, who then taught the future leaders of the civil rights movement during a period of racial segregation in schools. Those students who would become leaders of the civil rights movement.
They helped usher in a period where Black people could actualize themselves as part of the United States. That history should encourage us and give us hope that even amid a second Trump presidency, we can and will fight back.
Now is not the time to wall in doubt and fear. Now is the time to get to work.
I encourage all educators, social workers, people who work with young people, and people who work with people of color, specifically Black people, to utilize the time between the election and inauguration to show the seeds of resistance in your industry on behalf of marginalized and oppressed communities and fight back against the coming on slot of policy that will harm people who look like us. We can do it. We’ve done it before, and we will certainly do it again.
Now let’s get to work.
