Not soon after Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, a viral illustration emerged: four Black women sit atop a building, coffee cups in hand, watching the world burn at a distance.
An American flag hangs over the edge. The image captures a mood of exhaustion and detachment.
>>> House Democrats Prepare Massive Corruption Investigations Against Trump
Across TikTok and Threads, Black people have urged one another to “not give them a reaction.”
The “them” refers to white people who find Black rage exciting and profitable. The message is clear: anger will not become spectacle.
“We’re not shouting any more,” the sentiment goes.
The priority is staying alive, caring for each other, and stepping forward for rights that others have taken for granted while Black people risked their lives to protect them.
An old African American proverb says: “If you can’t hear, then you must feel.” Black communities had warned about Trump for a decade.
Now the rest of America must feel the consequences without Black involvement.
The 250th anniversary of the nation arrives among Black communities as a whisper, not a roar. Freedom has always been different for Black people.
Even before the colonists rebelled, enslaved Black South Carolinians shouted “Liberty!”
during the Stono Revolt of 1739, the largest slave rebellion in the British mainland colonies before the American Revolution.
That same language of “liberty” appears in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson drafted a passage condemning slavery, but it was cut.
Slavery was big business for both North and South.
