No one can truly appreciate what it's like to step into the shoes of someone else — to feel the pleasures, pride, and burden of their experience. It would be as impossible for me to know what it’s like to live the life of a Native American as it would be for a resident of Indonesia to understand the history, heritage, and generational traumas of an immigrant in America. That said, I've been thinking a good deal recently about what it must be like to be Black in America these days.
That experience has never been easy. It is rooted in forced abduction from homes in Africa, centuries of slavery, Jim Crow after the dismantling of Reconstruction, mass incarceration, limited upward mobility, persistent racism, and regular incidents of police brutality. There have been great strides forward, thanks to the Civil Rights movement, the Voting Rights Act, and expanded access to higher education and economic opportunity. But periods of progress seem inevitably to be followed by periods of regression that threaten to erase those advances.
I don’t know whether racism itself is on the rise, or whether overt displays of rage and hatred are partly the product of a social media ecosystem that makes such behavior feel more acceptable. But the willingness to display racism in public was demonstrated starkly on July 5 of this year, when hundreds of the white nationalist group Patriot Front marched in Washington, D.C., as the nation marked its 250th anniversary celebrations. Photos showed the participants masked to hide their identities. Apparently being “outed” for their hatred was a bridge too far, even for them.
The masked faces were chilling, evoking images of the Ku Klux Klan. But I was drawn to a particular photograph from that rally: In it, a single Black woman riding on public transportation was surrounded by a group of these masked thugs. I can't know what she was thinking but her expression wasn’t so much fear as indifference, combined with fortitude, anger, and perhaps a belief that justice eventually would have its way.
Ever since the legal battle over a planned Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois, our jurisprudence provides broad latitude to those with abhorrent views to exercise their First Amendment rights. Certainly, people have a right to their opinions, regardless of how reprehensible they may be. That said, those who espouse offensive views must live with the consequences of their behaviors. Yet, the fact that racists are comfortable demonstrating in the open is at least evidence that they believe there will be little consequence — little blowback — to their display. In our present moment, their assumption would seem accurate. We are in the era of treating all points of view as equally valid, rather than interrogating the most egregious and condemning them repeatedly and openly.
This reprehensible display of hatred is hardly isolated — and it's frequently focused on targets like Jews, Muslims, the LGBTQ people, and immigrants. But I would maintain that the institutionalized oppression of Black Americans occupies a distinct and foundational place in our history. There are a number of signs in American life today that suggest that Black Americans' rights and experiences are being given less weight. At best, these developments reflect deep resentment toward diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. At worst, they suggest an attempt to reinforce a racial caste system that I had hoped was slowly falling away.
Without living through it, it's impossible to imagine growing up Black in today’s America and continually confronting expressions of exclusion, discrimination, and hatred. The examples are not identical, and no one of them tells the whole story. But together, they send a disturbing message about the kind of country America is becoming.
The gutting of the Voting Rights Act: In April, the Supreme Court substantially narrowed the circumstances in which Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can require states to create majority-minority districts. The majority concluded that Louisiana’s use of race in drawing a second majority-Black district was not required by the act and violated constitutional limits on racial gerrymandering. Critics — including the dissenting justices — warned that the ruling could make it far harder to challenge maps that dilute Black voting power. Whatever legal reasoning one accepts, the likely result is diminished protection for Black voters seeking an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
Confederate statues remaining in place: To me, this one seems so obvious as to defy credulity. In the early 20th century, statues and monuments to the leaders of the Confederacy cropped up throughout the South, alongside a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the release of Birth of a Nation, and the creation of the Southern “lost cause” narrative. What these monuments represent is the glorification of the oppressors — the slave-owners who sought to continue that “peculiar institution” by waging war against the Union. These people were not only trying to further the immorality of chattel slavery, but were actually rebelling against the government. They were traitors to their country, pure and simple.
The argument that somehow these statues are merely monuments to the Southern "way of life" is absurd. Why has so much energy been expended on the resurrection of images of these people, other than to implicitly endorse the narrative of a glorious South? That is, a region whose way of life was destroyed in the “War of Northern Aggression,” a narrative that long ago was correctly relegated to the trash heap. Being part of history does not automatically make someone worthy of commemoration.
The naming (and renaming) of military bases: Numerous Army bases in the South were originally named for Confederate officers, often during the Jim Crow era. After Congress required the Confederate names to be removed, the bases were renamed in 2023. The current administration has since restored the names — including Fort Bragg, Fort Hood and Fort Lee — now allegedly honoring different service members who happened to share the Confederate officers’ surnames. The legal namesakes may have changed, but restoring the familiar names sends an unmistakable cultural message. Again, an absurd scenario.
Military leadership: Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, senior military officers have been fired without detailed public explanations, while an unusual number of women and Black officers have been removed from promotion lists. In one recent case, Hegseth removed nine officers from a list of 31 candidates for promotion to one-star admiral — including all three women on the list and at least two Black men. The Pentagon says promotions are based on merit, but it has not publicly explained the individual decisions. Hegseth has also dismissed several prominent female military leaders, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy. Ordinarily, a Defense Secretary pulls names from promotion lists for moral, mental, physical or professional failings. Yet, many of those denied advancement have been extolled by their colleagues and/or have been decorated for their heroism and competence.
At the same time, the Pentagon’s seeming anti-DEI review swept up online tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen, Navajo Code Talkers, Jackie Robinson, and other minority service members. Officials acknowledged that some pages were removed mistakenly and restored some of them, but many remained unavailable after the initial purge.
The backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion: There has been broad backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in government, academia, the media, and corporate America. Support and funding from Washington is increasingly conditional upon scrubbing away any remnant of DEI from organizations and their websites.
There's a fair argument that the pendulum swung too far toward equality of outcome being the primary measure of advancement, rather than equality of opportunity. It’s complicated, and I don’t propose to settle that debate here. But diversity and inclusion are legitimate objectives: after all, inclusion in the body politic and the advancement of society is important for maintaining cohesion in society. "Equity” — looking toward outcomes — is where a legitimate debate can be had. But the pendulum has now swung sharply in the other direction. The damage comes not only from the policies being eliminated, but also from the anger and vehemence behind the campaign against them.
References to slavery in museums and at historic monuments: It’s a little odd that those who seek to portray American history as one continual march toward greatness have, as part of their mission, chosen to portray slavery as anything other than what it was — the brutal, violent, dehumanizing enslavement of an entire race over hundreds of years. Efforts have been made to provide context to this dark period over the years, by including references to slave quarters at Washington’s home, among other national historic sites. But in January, the National Park Service removed panels from the President’s House site in Philadelphia which told the stories of nine people enslaved by George Washington. What's happening now is a systematic attempt to whitewash (sorry for the pun) slavery and erase the legacies of the Black men and women who helped to build this country.
The racialization of fraud: There has been plenty of fraud committed against government programs over the years. The massive case involving the Minnesota social-service program Feeding Our Future does warrant investigation and prosecution. That fraud was perpetrated largely by members of that state's Somali-American community — but it's worth noting that the founder of that nonprofit is a white woman. And yet, those encouraging mass deportation seized upon the Somalis' shared heritage and milked it as evidence of rampant fraudsters from Africa flouting our country's laws. At the same time, the president has granted clemency to numerous people convicted of fraud and other white-collar crimes. The contrast suggests that fraud is sometimes treated as an individual offense — and other times as evidence against a whole population.
Mass incarceration: This is worthy of multiple columns, but suffice it to say that the United States continues to incarcerate people at one of the highest rates in the world, and Black Americans remain imprisoned at dramatically disproportionate rates — some 5.5 times the rate of incarceration of white people. Black people also constitute nearly half of those serving life, life-without-parole or “virtual life” sentences. The devastating effect of this phenomenon on Black families and communities cannot be overstated.
Refugee status for Afrikaners: Repressive regimes around the world that have placed countless people at risk because of their race, religion, nationality, or political beliefs. Yet at a moment when the current administration is conducting mass deportations and drastically restricting most refugee admissions, including those from Haiti and Somalia, into the U.S., one group has received extraordinary treatment: white South Africans.
The administration set a historically low annual refugee ceiling of 7,500, with most of those places expected to go to Afrikaners. While the administration says these white South Africans (many of whom still own much land and industry in that country) face persecution, how can a Black person view this as anything other than a clear message about which immigrants America prefers?
These policies and decisions are not identical. But taken together, they reveal a period of deep and deliberate revisionism — one that diminishes the history, rights, and contributions of Black Americans. It is shameful, and it should concern all of us.
Glenn
When he isn’t writing his column Thinking Things Through, Glenn Sonnenberg heads a real estate investment company and serves on several nonprofit boards. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Mr. Sonnenberg also received his J.D. from USC. He began his career as an attorney specializing in real estate and finance. Follow him on Substack here.
