How Did We Get Here?
Love America. Hate Americans.
Edited by Lorey Zahn and Eric Helm
My head has been spinning. If it seems as though I’ve been missing in action, that’s because I have been missing in action. I haven’t been able to keep up. And, like you, I’ve struggled to make sense of the non-sensical. It’s Whack-A-Mole time in America!
A question I hear often and is on my mind as well is, “How did we get here?”
We know that it’s hard to understand race here in America, thus Joe, Mara and I founded the Civil Conversations Project to provide you with information and an understanding of America’s Thing With Race that is simply difficult to get in order that readers and participants might use that knowledge to advocate and activate for an end to American racism.
We understood that solid information about America’s Thing With Race would be more useful than emotion, speculation and anger in helping bring an understanding of where this issue has taken the country.
We’ve always had a few core beliefs: That racism, specifically anti-Black racism, was harmful to Americans. ALL Americans. That emotional rants and rhetoric is counterproductive. That all people from all sides of the political spectrum are welcome. That we will meet you where you are. That we will function as a ‘gateway drug’ for further involvement.
We knew that American politicians have used race to pit one American against another since the beginning of time. The old, “Make ‘em angry. Make ‘em vote.” Or in even simpler terms, “Divide and conquer.”
That “Divide and conquer” strategy worked so well that in 2005, Ken Mehlman, one of Reagan’s foot soldiers and the chairman of the Republican National Committee went before the NAACP at their annual meeting and apologized for his party’s decades of vote-getting race-baiting. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
Then he high-tailed it home and helped design suppression of the Black vote as well as Gerrymandered districts that were guaranteed to place a White Republican in office. You don’t throw away a winning strategy no matter how much you faux-apologize to the NAACP.
In 1958 when George Wallace, not exactly an anti-racist or a paragon of equality, lost his race for the governorship of Georgia to John Patterson who used racism more effectively than Wallace to win the election, Wallace famously swore, “ I was out-niggered by John Patterson and I’ll tell you here and now, I’ll never be out-niggered again.” And he wasn’t. You can listen to George here on YouTube. It’s a fun listen - sort of unbelievable…a politician being honest.
The Civil Conversations Project morphed a bit as we came to recognize that racism is once again being used as both the reason and the tool to attempt to tear down our government and our democracy. I’m not sure we gained a lot of traction. Who can believe that something as rock solid as American Democracy, the beacon of light for the entire world, could possibly be rocked? “Yeah, racism here in America is real. But our democracy is solid. I’m not worried about our democracy.”
Yet who doesn’t pick up the paper or tune into the news to see what the latest pillar of our democracy was kicked away while we slept? Most of those pillars of democracy have been kicked away using the bludgeon of racism and the false boogey-man of diversity. DEI, with just three letters, has become a 4-letter word that even liberals are decrying. But here’s the scary, part. Americans are watching our democracy being torn apart by a racist dictator-in-the making and they’re cheering. CHEERING!
I hear tons of liberals breathing a sigh of relief that the country seems to be waking up and rebelling against Trump. That’s a fantasy. While only 4 percent of Democrats like his performance, 90 percent of Republicans do. And more registered voters think America is on the right track than have felt that way at any other point in the last 21 years. So don’t look for a mass rebellion or a voter-driven movement to change a thing. It ain’t happening.
Americans who seem to proclaim their love for America the loudest, also seem to hate Americans the most. Love America. Hate Americans. So what’s going on here?
Since President Ronald Reagan, politicians have won elections by convincing their voters that their opponents are not trying to use the federal government to help Americans like them but are instead trying to hand tax dollars and power to undeserving Black and Brown Americans, women, and LGBTQ+ Americans. Possibly his most famous speech was just 18 words long: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” It was Reagan who made the boogey man (or woman) from his infamous ‘welfare queen’, and ‘young buck on food stamps’ depictions. He identified them as being from South Chicago, so there would be no confusion as to their race.
Over the past 45 years, that rhetoric has created a White population that believes the federal government is controlled by their enemies, now sometimes called the “Deep State,” whom they blame for destroying the country. Those voters now appear to hate the federal government and to be willing, even eager, to dismantle it.[1]
Within days of taking office, Trump had declared war on programs everywhere that sought to level a racially tilted playing field. He ordered all 11 of the environmental justice offices of the EPA shuttered. The EPA web site used to define environmental justice as, “Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health, hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.”
(A short, good read, and poignant example of environmental justice was written years ago by NYT columnist Charles Blow. Reading the comments will help you understand the depth of racism and the animosity against those who try to expose it. I’m kinda disappointed that over the years, my writing has only generated one death threat. And it was even more disturbing because the potential killer pictured me in my underwear! I’ll try to do better! I saved the op-ed, of course. Because…um…I’m a pack rat? https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/opinion/charles-blow-inequality-in-the-air-we-breathe.html)
Within days: Black Lives Matter Plaza in front of the White House, created in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, has been painted over and renamed “Liberty Plaza” to appease Trump and his purse strings.
Within days: The Department of the Army, which manages Arlington National Cemetery, had scrubbed all information from the Arlington National Cemetery website and visitor center explaining the history, role and marker placements of substantial female and non-White internees.
Prior to President Truman 1948 executive order to integrate the armed forces, following the deadly explosionat Port Chicago in Oakland, California, that blew to bits 320 men, 202 of whom were Black Americans, U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) were interned in section 27.
Within days: Nothing has been too small or trivial to escape the attention of the new administration. The Department of Defense removed (and then, under pressure, replaced) all mention of Ira Hayes, one of the 6 heroes at the famous flag raising at Iwo Jima and a Brown-skinned, Native American member of the Pima Nation.
Within days: The administration abruptly fired General Charles Brown from his position as Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while Pete Hegseth, the White, least qualified ever Secretary of Defense, who is unable to conduct a secure meeting, ridiculed the general for being hired not for his qualifications, but as a DEI hire. Hegseth: “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt.” I wrote about that here.
Within days: The Department of Defense refused to support a Maryland National Guard event honoring Frederick Douglas, a former slave, and anti-slavery activist from Maryland.
Within days: On February 14 – Valentine’s Day – a White House spokesman made the position of the new president clear: “The White House’s position is that we are ridding the federal government of DEI, full stop. DOGE is there as a collaborator ensuring that we get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. And if DEI is waste fraud and abuse, it’s gone.”[2]
Within days: Both the Department of Defense and the State Department had cancelled all plans to celebrate or acknowledge Black History Month.
Within days: Remember apartheid? For decades, members of the White, Dutch-descended, Afrikaner minority have been trying to convince anyone and everyone who would listen that they are the true victims in post-apartheid South Africa. They’ve made claims of mass killings of their people and widespread land grabs by a Black-led government that they insist is seeking retribution for the sins of the Afrikaner-led apartheid government. Their stories have been false or greatly exaggerated, but that hasn’t stopped them from being widely amplified and repeated online.
Afrikaner (think Elon Musk) colonizers have found a champion of their cause in Trump, and it has led to a moment that few of them could have imagined. On Friday, February 7th, Trump put the weight of American influence behind a hotly disputed claim that Afrikaners were the “victims of unjust racial discrimination,” issuing an executive order to allow them to migrate to the United States as refugees, while halting aid to South Africa. All this while simultaneously removing legal status from Haitian refugees, a country that American slavery helped decimate.
The move was met with dismay in South Africa, a majority-Black nation where more than 90 percent of the population comes from racial groups persecuted by the racist, apartheid regime. These groups — Black, Colored and Indian — remain statistically far behind the white minority in virtually every economic measure.[3]In the order, Trump said that American officials should do everything possible to help “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”[4]
Within days: UVA – the University of Virginia - board of visitors adopted a plan to dissolve all DEI programs on campus as well as all DEI offices and positions across the UVA system. The plan covers “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” The goal is to make sure UVA complies with the Constitution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In the ‘Dumbest statement of the year’ category, GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin called the vote “a huge step toward restoring the ideas and pillars of Thomas Jefferson and the university that he founded, that everyone is created equal, that we will not have illegal discrimination, that we will restore merit-based opportunity.”[5]
And the beat goes on. Just yesterday Trump took aim at America’s National Museum, the Smithsonian, when he issued an executive order criticizing the Smithsonian Institution for peddling what he described as a “divisive, race-centered ideology and that it promotes narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive” and instructed the museum to restore itself to “its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”
The Smithsonian is home to the National Museum of African American History and Culture., which our very own board member, Bill Gwaltney, helped develop. And while the museum is not within Trump’s chain-of-command - that belongs to congress - Vance is, by law, on the Board of Directors and Trump has proven that he can bend congress to his will.
Yesterday, the U.S. Naval Academy announced that it has changed its admissions policy to no longer consider race, a shift that comes nearly two years after the Supreme Court rejected the use of affirmative action in college admissions. In that 2023 ruling, the Supreme Court left open a question of how military academies could consider race as a factor in admissions. In December, a federal judge, citing national security reasons, ruled the Naval Academy, aka Annapolis, could continue its race-conscious admissions policies.
The shift in policy comes after many Defense Department leaders across administrations concluded that a racially diverse officer corps is critical to national security. In the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the majority ruling included a potential exception for the nation’s military academies because of “potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”
In the “Revered American Sport Icon” category, a week after removing then restoring an article about Jackie Robinson from the Pentagon's website, the Trump administration has reportedly gone back to that well. A biography about Jackie Robinson - who as an Army lieutenant and while in uniform, was once arrested and court martialed for not moving to the back of the bus…an Army bus on an Army base - has been identified as a candidate for removal from the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy due to a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering the school to identify books with diversity, equity and inclusion themes and remove them from circulation, according to The New York Times.
The Naval Academy's statement “The U.S. Naval Academy is fully committed to executing and implementing all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president and is currently reviewing the Nimitz Library collection to ensure compliance,” said Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a Navy spokesman. “The Navy is carrying out these actions with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives. By God, we vow to make the Naval Library White again! ” Ok…maybe I added that last sentence since. It’s clear what they were trying to say using the language of bureaucrats.
The Robinson biography is reportedly one of 900 books identified as conflicting with the order, with other examples including “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.” and “Einstein on Race and Racism.”
And finally, in the “International category”, today it was revealed that in a terse three-paragraph letter sent by the American Embassy in France to French companies, executives were instructed that President Trump’s moves to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies would apply to any firm doing business with the U.S. government. It said it was giving them five days to sign a form indicating that they would comply.
The notice caused a sensation in the French corporate world and drew a curt reply from the French government. “This practice reflects the values of the new American government. They are not ours,” the economy ministry said in a statement late Friday. France’s economy minister, Eric Lombard, “will remind his counterparts within the American government of this,” the statement said.
With all of the progress America has made, some ideas have never been far from the forefront. As explained by Heather Cox Richardson, not all men agreed with America’s founding concept of all men being created equal with equal rights. “The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence took a revolutionary stand against monarchy, the idea that some people were better than others and had a right to rule. They asserted as “self-evident” that all people are created equal and that God and the laws of nature have given them certain fundamental rights. Those include—but are not limited to—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The role of government was to make sure people enjoyed these rights, they said, and thus a government is legitimate only if people consent to that government. For all that the founders excluded Indigenous Americans, Black colonists, and all women from their vision of government, the idea that the government should work for ordinary people rather than nobles and kings was revolutionary.
From the beginning, though, there were plenty of Americans who clung to the idea of human hierarchies in which a few superior men should rule the rest. They argued that the Constitution was designed simply to protect property and that as a few men accumulated wealth, they should run things. Permitting those without property to have a say in their government would allow them to demand that the government provide things that might infringe on the rights of property owners.
By the 1850s, elite southerners, whose fortunes rested on the production of raw materials by enslaved Black Americans, worked to take over the government and to get rid of the principles in the Declaration of Independence. As Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina put it: ‘I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson that ‘all men are born equal.’
In the 1890s the rise of industry led to the concentration of wealth at the top of the economy, and once again, wealthy leaders began to abandon equality for the idea that some people were better than others. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie celebrated the ‘contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer,’ for although industrialization created ‘castes,’ it created ‘wonderful material development,’ and ‘while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.’
Those at the top were there because of their ‘special ability,’ Carnegie wrote, and anyone seeking a fairer distribution of wealth was a ‘Socialist or Anarchist…attacking the foundation upon which civilization rests.’ Instead, he said, society worked best when a few wealthy men ran the world, for ‘wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves.’”[6]
So here we are. Worried about our democracy as we watch it get torn apart by one man - an elected official who thinks he reigns supreme; and another, a soon-to-be trillionaire naturalized citizen, born into the ruling class of South Africa before the end of apartheid and never elected to anything by the American people.
I think we know how we got here.
Sources
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dod-native-american-ira-hayes-removed/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2025/doge-playbook-dei-trump/
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2025/doge-playbook-dei-trump/
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/world/africa/afrikaners-trump-south-africa.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/trump-south-africa-aid-white-landowners.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
[5] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/uva-board-of-visitors-dissolves-dei-programs-virginia-columbia-university-grants-d9c5b66a?st=Hvv83K&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
There's a very simple answer: they are clones of the Devil. Hate won't win if love prevails. Let's love hard! And love means no harm.