“At the bottom of our news tonight, there’s been a new animal aimed in the direction of falling off the face of the Earth. Yes, young black teenagers are reported to be the oldest, and the newest, creatures added to the endangered species list. As of now, no efforts have been made to preserve the Blacks. When asked why, a top law official adds, ‘Because they make good game hunting'” Endangered Species (Tales from the Darkside) – Ice Cube
The Trump administration’s recent horrific treatment of immigrants, including raids of businesses and homes by masked heavily armed unidentified individuals have people rightly focused on immigrant populations. Immigrants are being targeted, arrested, and sent to maximum security prisons in foreign countries – not in their country of origin. The Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and the law enforcement agencies under their control flagrantly violate US laws and the constitution daily as they prioritize terror and brutality over sensible or even practical immigration policy.
I am loathe to add to the infuriating chorus of people referring to the atrocities of the current regime as a “distraction”. However, there is a building concern that the true target of this administration is camouflaged by Steven Miller and Kristie Noem’s cartoonish fascism. Hiding in plain site is the true aim of Project 2025. What connects much of what has happened since Trump took office is the decimation and subjugation of Black America. In Trump’s mind, the best way to accomplish this goal was to rewind history to a time when Trump, the GOP, and the USA were on top: the 1980’s.
Calamity: The Election of Ronald Reagan
The 1980’s were a terrible time. In Africa, people were starving to death and dying of preventable and treatable diseases. Here in America, crime rates were at an all time high, nearly reaching their peak at the end of the decade. The increase in crime was accelerated by the leadership and policies implemented by the Reagan administration. Reagan slashed federal spending and decimated the federal workforce. Social services were cut to the bone, leaving poor communities isolated with no resources to care for their most vulnerable members. Homelessness skyrocketed as America languished in recession. Tax cuts transferred wealth to the richest Americans; greed was rewarded and welfare was seen as a scam perpetrated by Black people.
The massive amount of drugs flooding into Black communities added to the increase in crime in Black neighborhoods. These drugs are widely believed to have been trafficked into Black communities by the Reagan administration, launching the crack epidemic and destroying countless Black lives. Redlining prevented Black people from being able to freely move to other neighborhoods and rental discrimination was pervasive with most landlords never receiving so much as a citation for refusing to rent to Black people. Trump himself was one of the worst landlords and was sued by the Justice Department in the 1970’s for refusing to rent to black people. Throughout the 1980’s he was notorious for waging war against rent stabilized tenants, cutting off their water and heat to force them out of their apartments.
One of the most significant and lasting parts of Reagan’s tenure were his crippling cuts to public school funding. He gutted federal funds to schools at the same time as he raised the mandatory standard requirements for teachers and students. This forced schools to cut teachers and class sizes ballooned. Electives vanished, teachers began supplementing school supplies from their paychecks, and Reagan cut almost all of school lunch spending. In fact, he encouraged cafeterias to privatize and companies began charging students more money per meal. Cafeterias were forced to cut corners and lower standards eventually counting ketchup as a vegetable to meet nutrition guidelines. School vouchers became popular as Reagan supported privatization of k-12 education. Civil Rights laws went unenforced by Reagan’s DOJ as they abandoned their duty to protect marginalized citizens. All of these problems disproportionately hurt Black students. And none of this touches the conservative ideological shift Reagan ushered into public education. He was a strong advocate of prayer in public schools and made numerous speeches and radio addresses lamenting the separation of church and state. Reagan was also obsessed with patriotism and even signed a bill into law making square dancing the national dance. Children across the USA were forced to learn square dancing because as the bill states:
“Whereas square dancing is a traditional form of family recreation which symbolizes a basic strength of this country, namely, the unity of the family; Whereas square dancing epitomizes democracy because it dissolves arbitrary social distinctions; and Whereas it is fitting that the square dance be added to the array of symbols of our national character and pride” S.J.Res.59
The discovery and rise of cases of AIDS and HIV was ignored and openly mocked by the Reagan administration. Two of the first seven people known to have what would be known as AIDS were Black. To this day, half of all new cases of HIV are Black people. It is clear that there is a direct connection between the failures of the Reagan Administration and the fact that Black people continue to contract the disease at disproportionate levels. Of course Reagan did not care about gay people or Black people. But he was far from the only one. When the American Public Health Association had their first session on AIDS in 1986, they failed to invite any people of color to to the event.
The 1980’s was a brutal, difficult time of struggle and racial oppression. Then the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 marked the beginning of a new era of modest prosperity for Black people. Economic growth and fiscal policies designed to assist families and lower income workers boosted Black American’s out of poverty and into the middle class. Black employment rates surged, college attendance rates increased, and a new Black America emerged.
Catastrophe: The Election of Donald Trump
The debate continues as to what caused the outcome of the 2016 election, but the result is clear: America elected an unabashed racist. During his first administration, Trump seemed as surprised as anyone that he won the presidency and stumbled his way through his first term like a drug addled low-level gangster. But his enduring popularity while he was out of office allowed him to keep the backing of the conservative elite. Who are these shady figures on the right who kept him on a leash, these powerful puppet masters waiting to bend the country to their ideological will? No surprise, they are the same people or proteges of Ronald Reagan and his administration. They have the same doctrines, the same goals, and the same bigotry. Actually, bigotry doesn’t go far enough, it’s a focused inexhaustible determined campaign of conquest and subservience of Black Americans.
Moreover, the re-election of Donald Trump and the execution of Project 2025 is a four alarm fire for Black Americans. Every action the regime has taken is designed to specifically hurt Black Americans and stymie or destroy any power they have accumulated in the last 30 years. Of course they would like to turn the clock back to Jim Crow or heck even before the Civil War. But this administration is following a playbook that worked extremely well for them in 1980, and this time they have a pliant GOP and feckless democratic party who will provide no resistance.
On the other hand, Trump is terribly ridiculously stupid, obvious, and overt in his destruction. Where Reagan may have inherited trouble, Trump buys it. Where Reagan sold trickle down like a kindly grandpa, Trump screams over helicopters that deadbeats deserve to get fleeced. Where Reagan saw potential for a permanent underclass of impoverished minority workers, Trump sees brown bodies to be beaten, robbed, and enslaved. No nuance, no charm, no style – all playground bully. Flanked by a cabal of racists and one particular anti-black immigrant who happens to be the richest man in the world, Trump will do the worst things Black America has seen in a long time. Cruel, sad, sometimes baffling, but always painfully stupid.
First, Trump dismantled the USAID, cutting off millions of (Black and Brown) poor, hungry, sick, and dying people around the world from the food and medicine keeping them alive. Then DOGE fired tens of thousands of federal workers in a clear attempt to hobble the government and grind all federal functions to a halt. The decimation of the federal workforce had the added bonus of removing Black workers from good paying union jobs. Further, the federal government gives priority hiring to veterans, which includes many Black Americans who join the military for access to college and training. Federal jobs are also protected by fair hiring practices and equal opportunity rules, which prevent Black workers from being unfairly targeted in the workplace. Unlike large corporations, the federal government is far more likely to have Black people in senior level positions. By drastically reducing the federal workforce, Trump and DOGE also reduced the amount of Black Americans in managerial positions, technical, medical, engineering, and scientific jobs. This was not a coincidence.
Particularly in the military, Black Americans were able to climb the ranks of the armed forces, reaching the highest levels of leadership. One of Trump’s top priorities was installing doofus Pete Hegseth to whiten the US military and remove the top brass. This cleared out many of the highest level Black people with the most power in America. By making it appear as if every high ranking Black official was there because of DEI, they were able to remove many Blacks that had earned seniority and the ability make decisions about our countries military operations. The Trump administration also wanted to be sure that if the citizens of America rose up, and you can imagine which citizens they pictured rising up, there would be white people in charge to carry out Trump’s orders.
The murder bill, other wise known as the big beautiful bill, is being marked up right now by Senate Republicans. This bill slashes Medicaid spending and will cut the healthcare and food benefits for millions of poor and disabled Americans. The entirely GOP authored bill represents the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history. Similar to Reagan’s tax cuts, the murder bill will cut taxes from the wealthiest Americans, with the richest getting the most benefit. Absurdly evil, the bill literally takes food out of the mouth of poor children and gives it to people who have more money than they could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes.
Reagan’s fantasy of dismantling the Department of Education has become a reality in the dystopian Trump era. President Reagan could only imagine the republican rubberstamp and the democratic acquiescence to exactly what he wanted: relinquishing total control of education to the states. The Trump administration both cut and withheld funding to schools, leaving them dangerously under funded. This will undoubtedly lead to larger class sizes and higher turnover for teachers. Under Trump, the DOJ has again dismissed civil rights cases against bad actors allowing children to be harmed by racist and bigoted policies. In public schools, books are banned, teachers cannot teach parts of history that may make white students uncomfortable, children cannot ask to be called by their preferred name, and they cannot wear their hair in a style they want. People often separate these issues but it is important to remember that there are Black authors banned, it’s Black history not being taught, Black trans kids are oppressed, and Black children are punished for their hairstyle. Every one of these policies targets Black lives.
During his first term, Trump’s stewardship of the Covid pandemic was an unmitigated disaster. When it appeared as though Black and Brown people may bear the brunt of the health crisis, his administration became complacent and wanted to let the virus run its course. His second term brought far more sinister attacks on the American health system. But underlying all of the funding cuts and the ludicrous derelict choice of RFK jr., is the revolting return of eugenics. Eugenics allowed Reagan to let HIV/AIDS run rampant in the gay community without keeping him up at night. Eugenics allowed the government to perform mass forced sterilizations of Black, Brown and indigenous women until the 2020’s. Eugenics allows steep cuts in disability benefits, rights, care, and accommodation.
Stopping vaccination research, preventing Americans from receiving vaccinations, and eliminating funding for vaccination clinics will undoubtedly cause health crises all over America. And of course this will disproportionately effect Black people. In many places in America, hospitals and doctors are increasingly distant from Black communities. Access to routine care can be hard to access and the cuts made by the Trump administration will strain an already stretched too thin healthcare system. This is common knowledge. This is purposeful. Black Americans will suffer and that’s the reason why this band of unqualified imbeciles (who are all firm believers in eugenics) were chosen.
Crossroads
Black Americans are at a crossroads. We are already exhausted, spiritually, mentally and physically. Trump is taking our jobs. Blocking us out of the military and erasing our sterling military legacy. Our wealth is once again being stolen from us and transferred to the ultra-rich. School funding was stripped from our communities and the true impact on our children has not been fully realized yet. Our history is again being buried and lost. Our environment, from the air we breath and the water we drink is polluted and the thin environmental protections in place are crumbling like the infrastructure around us. Our healthcare system, already riddled with centuries of medical racism has been hijacked on the federal level by eugenics loving morons. And vaccinations, a brilliant lifesaving innovation that we introduced to this country are on the chopping block.
We cannot go back to the 1980’s. Republicans must not win the presidency in 2028. If they win again, they will solidify all of the above and we will slide further backward. We have 3 long years ahead and many many disastrous, horrible and really dumb things will happen in the course of those three years. I can’t begin cover all of the ways in which Black people are going to be assaulted, hurt, unfairly punished, used, and tormented by this authoritarian regime. But it’s the stupidity that we must remember and hold on to. We are smarter and that makes us far more resilient.
In Bugs Bunny cartoons, he would often encounter the dim-witted white hunter Elmer Fudd. Fudd was armed and the law was on his side, after all, it was rabbit season. But Bugs always won because he was smarter. Bugs didn’t just win, he also had fun tormenting Fudd. He was artistic and clever, using music and comedy as he mocked Fudd. Bugs was able to display the hunter’s stupidity while also making the best out of a truly terrifying situation. So, it might be helpful to think of Trump as Elmer Fudd during the next three years. As we try our best to make it through hunting season.
