A Nation

A Nation Watching Itself

Having President Trump in office lands differently when you’ve lived through the weight of America’s promises and its failures. For Black Americans, especially those of us who’ve experienced problems with equality, racism, and the long history of oppression, it doesn’t feel abstract. It feels personal.

I think about housing. Unequal housing wasn’t an accident — it was policy. Redlining, blockbusting, predatory lending. Generations fought to pass the Fair Housing Act in 1968. They marched so their kids could rent or buy without being turned away at the door. That fight never really ended. Section 8 waitlists are years long. Gentrification pushes families out of neighborhoods they held together through crack epidemics and disinvestment. When federal leadership signals that enforcement of civil rights laws is optional, the door cracks back toward the old ways. The people who fought for that ground know what it costs to lose it.

I think about criminalization. Black communities have lived with over-policing since Reconstruction. The War on Drugs, mandatory minimums, stop-and-frisk — all of it wrote a different set of rules for Black neighborhoods. We saw progress: sentencing reform, consent decrees, body cameras, a national conversation after 2020. But progress is fragile. When the tone at the top dismisses systemic racism as a “hoax,” it tells police departments, prosecutors, and judges that accountability is negotiable. That shift is felt in jail cells, in plea deals, in who gets a warning and who gets a record.

I think about schools and jobs. Brown v. Board was 1954. The Civil Rights Act was 1964. Affirmative action, DEI programs, HBCU funding — none of it was charity. It was repair. It was a recognition that 250 years of stolen labor and 100 years of Jim Crow couldn’t be undone with “colorblindness.” When a president without formal policy training or education in constitutional law treats those efforts as unfair advantages, it rewrites the story. It tells young Black kids that the hurdles their grandparents cleared are now called cheating.

Everything people fought and worked hard for — equality in jobs, housing, school — feels more vulnerable now. Not because one man changes a law overnight, but because leadership sets permission. It tells agencies what to prioritize. It tells courts what arguments to take seriously. It tells everyday people what kind of country we’re willing to be.

We allowed a president with no formal training in government, no background in civil rights law, and no lived experience of oppression to lead. That choice has consequences. It emboldens people who were waiting for a signal. It exhausts people who have been fighting for decades. It forces a new generation to re-litigate battles their elders thought were won.

But history doesn’t move in one direction. The same people who endured slavery, Black Codes, lynching, and segregation are still here. Still building. Still voting. Still putting kids through school. Still buying homes when the bank says no the first three times.

The treatment of racism in this country has always depended on who’s willing to name it and who’s willing to look away. A presidency can make that harder. It can slow the work. It can try to erase it.

It cannot undo the fact that we are still here. And we remember how to fight.

*Cathrynmharris