Black America is seriously under attack from the twice impeached, convicted felon Donald Trump and all his sycophants that make up the very bogus Make America Great Again (MAGA) gang. A substantial portion of White America with a splattering of a small disillusioned Black population and the Hispanic community have managed to put this man in office who has a definitely animus attitude toward our race. All the gains we have accomplished over the past fifty years are under attack and Trump is determined to return this country to its pre-civil rights years. No doubt his vision for this country is white domination in all aspects of control with blacks reduced to a subservient status.

One of his first acts as President was the signing of Executive Order 14151 titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Programs.” He issued that order practically before he sat down in the Oval Office. The order required the termination of all activities relating to DEI. He then terminated a sixty-year executive order signed by former President Lyndon Baines Johnson prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity. He ordered all websites depicting DEI to be removed from agencies and ordered that all employees considered to be part of DEI to be fired to include Carla Hayden, Librarian of the Library of Congress, the first Black to ever hold that position. Ms. Hayden was extremely qualified for the position, contrary to Trump’s assumption that if she is Black, she must be a DEI hire and she must not be competent. He is opposed to the teaching of Black History in high schools and colleges declaring the subject to be divisive and a race centered ideology inimical to western values. When in reality Black History is an intricate part of this country’s existence and extrapolates the real essence of western values.

In his attempt to Make America Great Again, he has ordered the renaming of military bases to their original names particularly the ones with Confederate generals. One of the more pathetic renamed military bases, points to Trump’s disdain for Black Americans, even toward the Black war heroes. In June 2023, the Biden Administration had removed the name of Fort Polk from Confederate General Leonidas Polk to William Henry Johnson, a sergeant with the 91^st Black Regiment who during World War I fought off a German attack in hand-to-hand combat to save his fellow soldier and suffered over 21 wounds. Recently, Trump removed this Black hero’s name from the military base and replaced with a traitor to the country, Polk, under the guise that it is a different Polk than the original one. But again, just another Trump Administration lie. No doubt it was renamed after the traitor in place of a real hero.

Not only is Trump renaming military bases after traitors to the country he is also returning statutes of these traitors to their location when they were removed during the Biden Administration. His Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made it quite clear that the administration is determined to celebrate America’s “proud Confederate history.” In order to do just that they have reinstalled the statue of Confederate General Albert Pike who once wrote that the “white race and that race alone shall govern this country. It is the only one that is fit to govern, and it is the only one that shall,” near Judiciary Square in Washington, D. C. Another statue that has been reinstalled is that which was designed by Confederate Sergeant Moses Ezekiel. On the monument is the inscription in Latin that describes the Civil War as a “lost cause” that was honorable for its noble principles and resistance to tyranny. It also depicts Blacks as supporting the Confederate soldiers implying that they wished to remain enslaved.  Of all places this monument is located at the Arlington National Cemetery, where legitimate American heroes are buried, men like General Colin Powell. This statue should be nowhere in the vicinity of where Powell Is memorialized.

Trump and his white racist sycophants can try as they may to return this country to a time when we as Black Americans were suspectable to their blatant racism, but they will not succeed. They can eradicate DEI, they can name all the military bases after men who do not deserve that honor, and they can place statues of traitors to the real values and meaning of this democracy, but they can never impact the love and respect that we have for our race. We are the descendants of great men and women like Frederick Douglass, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Ella Baker and of course Harriett Tubman and the thousands of Black Americans who have sacrificed over the years to bring us to where we are now. We know that time is on our side and just like other attempts have been made to break our spirit and failed, the same will be true now. Trump and MAGA are temporary, but the love and respect we have for our race is permanent and no amount of treacherous racist behavior can replace that feeling deeply engrained into the over forty-eight million Black Americans who will refuse to go back.