Stop the Steal, January 6, 2021
Anti-Trump, April 2025
Bloody Sunday, March 1965
Actually, I hadn’t planned to address the issue of Trump the administration’s policy protests sweeping the nation. Okay, well, that’s not entirely true. You see, I decided to wait for a while expecting that sooner or later someone would write about the issue that, like the delicious buffet at Golden Carrel, would provide me with an article to cherry pick from at my leisure, and go back for seconds if I wanted to. But two things prompted me into immediate action.
First, after multiple shared observations with close friends and week after week of watching the protests, I started to think about what my piece could look like.
Second, confirming my hunch that something blood pressure raising on the topic would soon be written I happened across a recent article, “We don’t have an option not to vote: how Black women are resisting” by Errin Hines. Here’s a particular paragraph from that piece that caused me heartburn:
“Within weeks of the election, a meme began to circulate of a group of Black women sitting on the roof of a building, sipping their beverages and watching the country burn. The message: Black women would do nothing to help if the democracy they’d tried to save went up in flames.”
Now as insulting as that meme was it was enough for me to get up off my duff and spring into action with a piece of my own.
But first, to put forth a pictorial context for the rest of this narrative, I want you to locate a few easy to find pictures of protests in the United States – specifically the 1965 March over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama (aka “Bloody Sunday”); last the “protests” on January 6, 2021 when “protesters” stormed the nation’s capital and last, any one of the many recent anti-Trump protests at cities and towns in America.
Go ahead, we’ll wait.
Now closely scrutinize each one of those pictures (use your thumb and index finger if you need to enlarge them) then answer the following questions:
(1) What is the racial makeup of the majority of protesters in each of those pictures?
(2) In each of those pictures, how are the protesters treated by the police and state troopers?
(3) In each picture, how are the protesters themselves treating the police and state troopers attempting to contain them?
(4) What, if any, conclusions can you reach after answering the three preceding questions?
You see, what we’re talking about here is that many Black folks – emphasis here: many – are sick and tired of putting themselves out there as a group and subjecting themselves to being fire hosed and arrested while, for example, largely white January 6th “protesters” get pardoned for brutalizing police officers and defacing the capital and recent protesters mill around stress free with nary a policeman (or Billy club) in sight. Hey, your eyes don’t lie!
Now before we return to the Errin Hines article, here are some candid comments from a number of Black women who I asked to weigh in on this “Black women missing in action” crapola:
Said one, “Truth is that if I considered joining one of those protests, history indicates that more likely than not I’d get treated more aggressively by law enforcement based on my race. So, no thanks. I have safer ways to express my feelings.”
Said another who chairs a local chapter of the NAACP, “we took a severe psychological beating from the last election and needed time for licking our wounds and self-healing. So, joining a protest these days is not a high priority right now.”
Said another, “Now this may sound cynical but as I look at pictures of those protesting Trump policies these days many of them are privileged and probably better off than many of us from the working class who sometimes work two jobs just to put food on the table. So, if you don’t see us out there, duh, perhaps it’s because we’re at work.”
Said another: “Historically white women were largely absent when we needed them the most yet are quick to ask us to join forces with them in a “sisterhood” when they feel threatened by changes that could impact them. If you think that I’m anxious to be out there protesting alongside white women who overwhelmingly voted for Trump, then you’ve got another thought coming.”
“Look, I don’t want to sound facetious, but we know from history in America how Black protests have been responded to,” shared a Black woman from North Carolina. “Who can forget the vicious bully club beatings the late John Lewis and scores of other Black women and men were subject to when they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on bloody Sunday.”
Said another: “What needs to said in whatever you write Terry is that although they see the value in protests, many Black women have chosen to become more strategic and work behind the scenes rather than hoisting signs in street protests. They’re working to get themselves and members of their communities running in local elections, on commission and school boards, assisting in voter registrations and actively encouraging folks to “buy Black.” It’s a huge mistake to underestimate us.”
“A lot of the shift in strategy is happening behind the scenes, said Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term “intersectionality” and is a leading legal and civil rights scholar at UCLA and Columbia Law School. Crenshaw added that she has been skeptical of much of what she has seen online about Black women “resting.”
“I see a contrast between what’s being given to me on social media and what I’m seeing in the trenches,” Crenshaw said. “Are we tired? Yes. Are we heartbroken? Absolutely. Are we willing to roll over and let this happen to us without hearing from us? I’m not seeing that, not in the circles I talk to. We don’t have an option not to fight.”
Now it’s not to say that Black men and women don’t have a “dog in this fight” when it comes to protest. Of course we do. Protests were a critical and successful strategy employed from day one of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. However, there’s growing knowledge in the Black community that in addition to protests, as the old saying goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” or, even better, “one size doesn’t fit all.”
The bottom line is this: don’t conclude that Black folks are “sitting out” protests nowadays and just chilling out when the truth is they’ve learned to become more strategic in getting things done…. and, oh yes, they now know from experience who they can depend on when the chips are down.
Terry Howard is an award-winning writer, a contributing writer with the Chattanooga News Chronicle, The American Diversity Report, The Douglas County Sentinel, Blackmarket.com, the Augusta County Historical Society Bulletin and recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, and third place winner of the Georgia Press Award.
