Laura Loomer’s racist attack on accomplished Black women exposes more than her bigotry. It exposes the cowardice of everyone who knows better and remains silent.

As I travel the world, I make it a point to study the history of the places I visit. I do not simply want to see the architecture, eat the food and take pictures. I want to know what happened there, who lived there, who suffered there and what history still whispers through the streets.

Several years ago, my siblings and I traveled to Venice to celebrate my brother Fred’s 50th birthday. It was there that I became fascinated by the history of a word Americans throw around far too casually: ghetto.

The word traces its history to Venice in 1516, when Venetian authorities ordered Jews confined to a separate section of the city. The area was associated with an old metal foundry — the geto or ghèto — and the name became attached to the compulsory Jewish quarter. The Jewish Community of Venice itself documents that the word was used from 1516 for the area where Jews were forcibly confined. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum likewise traces “ghetto” to the Venetian Jewish quarter established that year.

Think about that history for a moment. Ghetto was not originally slang for somebody Black you consider uncouth.

It was not a synonym for loud. It was not a description of bad manners. It was not a punch line. It was a word born from segregation. From forced residence. From a government deciding that a disfavored people should live over there, separated from everybody else. And that makes what Laura Loomer said all the more grotesque.

Loomer, who is Jewish, decided that the appropriate way to describe five prominent Black women was as “ghetto, entitled, race-obsessed, destructive Black BITCHES.”

Those women were Florida State Representative and Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Angie Nixon, U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, former U.S. Representative Cori Bush, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson. Reuters confirmed the remarks and reported that Loomer subsequently doubled down, calling Nixon a “ghetto, black, communist.”

This was not some unfortunate slip of the tongue. It was not satire. It was not a poorly chosen word in the heat of political debate. Loomer knew exactly what she was doing.

She reportedly announced that the media would call her racist and declared that she did not care. When Nixon responded, Loomer escalated, invoking “Ebonics,” talking about barking and tugging a leash, and calling the Black state representative “Shaniqua.”

So spare me the lecture about “context.” The context makes it worse. There is a long and ugly American tradition of taking Black women, particularly Black women who dare to possess education, authority, political power and an unwillingness to shrink themselves, and reducing them to caricatures.

Too loud. Too angry. Too aggressive. Too Black. Too “ghetto. And when all else fails: bitch. Loomer simply gathered the stereotypes together and vomited them into one sentence. What is especially obscene is the historical journey of the very word she chose.

As historian Daniel B. Schwartz has documented, “ghetto” moved in the American imagination from European Jewish quarters to segregated Black neighborhoods during the twentieth century. African Americans were using the term to describe racial confinement as early as the 1910s, and by the 1960s its association with Black urban communities had become widespread. That transition did not happen because Black people simply chose to live together in impoverished neighborhoods. Redlining, restrictive covenants, segregated public housing, discriminatory lending, racial violence and government policy helped manufacture residential segregation.

In other words, the word carries the scars of two histories of forced marginalization. First Jewish. Then Black. And Laura Loomer managed to weaponize that history against Black women. You cannot make the irony up.

A Jewish woman takes a word rooted in the confinement and humiliation of Jewish people, appropriates its later racialized meaning in America, and hurls it at Black women as an epithet. That is not clever. It’s historical illiteracy married to racism.

And now comes the part nobody wants to talk about. Where is everybody? Where are the elected officials who can find a camera in five minutes when the person being insulted belongs to a constituency they value?

Where are the Republican members of Congress? Where are the people constantly lecturing America about civility? Where are the family-values conservatives? Where are the religious leaders?

Where are the white evangelicals who can organize a prayer breakfast, a conference call and a press conference overnight when their political interests are threatened? Where are the Christian pastors who preach that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God?

And yes, where are the Jewish leaders who quite properly demand that antisemitism be confronted wherever it appears Because moral credibility cannot be race-specific.

You cannot ask Black people to stand against antisemitism, and we should, while becoming strangely mute when anti-Black racism is standing directly in front of you screaming through a bullhorn. Solidarity that only travels in one direction is not solidarity. It’s extraction.

I know what would happen if the races were reversed. Everybody knows. Imagine a prominent Black activist with access to a Democratic president calling five accomplished Jewish women — including members of Congress and a United States Supreme Court justice, “ghetto Jewish bitches.”

Just sit with that sentence. Cable news would explode. Organizations would issue statements before lunch. Politicians would race to social media to condemn antisemitism. Religious leaders would demand accountability. There would be discussions about the historic trauma embedded in the word “ghetto.” And they would be right. They would be absolutely right.

So why does the moral vocabulary suddenly become complicated when the women being degraded are Black? Why do we suddenly need seminars about nuance? Why do we suddenly hear that Loomer is merely “provocative,” “controversial,” “combative” or “an internet personality”?

No.

Sometimes a racist is just a racist.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Loomer a “stone-cold racist.” Maryland Governor Wes Moore accused her of attacking Black women because she believes racial provocation benefits her clicks and business model. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump condemned the degrading rhetoric. Even former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — hardly anyone’s idea of a progressive civil-rights champion — said Loomer’s rhetoric was hateful and racist and accused Trump and the Republican Party of continuing to keep her in their orbit.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene can locate the line and you cannot, perhaps the problem is not that the line is difficult to see. Perhaps you simply do not want to see it.

And that brings us to Donald Trump.

Loomer is not some anonymous account with fourteen followers posting from her basement. She has traveled with Trump. She has visited Mar-a-Lago. Trump has publicly praised her. She has boasted of influencing personnel decisions around his administration. Reuters reports that she has nearly two million followers and remains one of Trump’s most vocal allies, notwithstanding occasional disagreements with the White House. As of the reporting on these remarks, the White House had not responded to Reuters’ request for comment.

Silence from people with power is not neutrality. It is permission. And Black women know that permission all too well.

They know what it means to be expected to carry political movements, churches, organizations, families, workplaces and communities — and then be left standing alone when the abuse is aimed at them.

Ketanji Brown Jackson climbed to the highest court in the nation. Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar won seats in Congress. Cori Bush went from protesting in the streets of Ferguson to serving in the United States House of Representatives. Angie Nixon rose from community advocacy to the Florida Legislature and is now her party’s nominee for the United States Senate.

You do not have to agree with one political position held by any of them. Not one. Political disagreement is not racism. Policy criticism is not racism. Voting against somebody is not racism. Calling five Black women “ghetto Black bitches” is.

Stop playing in our faces.

And please do not insult our intelligence by pretending you cannot tell the difference. Laura Loomer wants to know why people are calling her racist. Because we have ears. Because we understand English. Because Black people have been studying the language of American racism for four hundred years. We recognize the dialect.

And since Loomer seems so enamored with the word bitch, perhaps the question Angie Nixon borrowed from Queen Latifah is the proper one: Who are you calling a bitch?

Because if your definition of “ghetto” is vulgar, belligerent, attention-starved behavior designed to humiliate people while demonstrating neither dignity nor restraint, Laura Loomer might want to reconsider where she is pointing that finger.

Not because she is Jewish. Not because she is white. Not because she is a woman. But because her own behavior supplies a far more convincing exhibit of the ugliness she is desperately trying to project onto accomplished Black women.

She wanted to demonstrate who the “ghetto Black bitches” were. Instead, she demonstrated something else entirely. And everybody watching knows exactly what it was. The only remaining question is whether they have the courage to say so.

Take note of everyone who does not.

By Dr. Talbert W. Swan, II

There has been some recent scuttlebutt surrounding the race for Springfield’s 11th Hampden District about the need for a higher “standard” of political leadership. I have no objection whatsoever to demanding high standards from those who seek public office. In fact, I believe our community should demand vision, competence, integrity, accountability, courage and measurable results from everyone entrusted with the public’s confidence.

What I will not allow, however, is for the history of that district to be selectively rewritten while my late uncle, State Representative Benjamin Swan, is conveniently erased from the conversation.

I have tremendous respect for the late Raymond A. Jordan Jr. His accomplishments are part of Springfield’s history. He was a trailblazer whose service deserves to be remembered and honored. Acknowledging Ben Swan does not require diminishing Raymond Jordan, and honoring Raymond Jordan does not require pretending that the next 22 years of representation somehow did not happen. History is big enough to tell the truth about both men.

Raymond Jordan left the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1993. Benjamin Swan was elected to the Legislature the following year and was sworn into office in January 1995. He remained there until his retirement in 2017. For twenty-two years, the people of Springfield repeatedly entrusted Ben Swan with representing them on Beacon Hill. He initially represented the 12th Hampden District and, following redistricting, represented the 11th Hampden District. You cannot seriously discuss the history, legacy or “standard” of leadership associated with that seat while skipping more than two decades of the man who actually represented its people.

Twenty-two years is not a footnote. Twenty-two years is not an intermission between two people somebody finds more politically convenient to discuss. Twenty-two years is a legacy. And if we are going to have a conversation about a standard, then Benjamin Swan belongs at the very center of it.

My uncle’s standard began long before he ever held elected office. Born in Mississippi in 1933, he came of age in an America in which Black people were legally segregated, politically marginalized and routinely subjected to racial violence. He became active in the civil-rights movement, served as president of the Springfield Branch of the NAACP and helped organize New England participation in the 1963 March on Washington. Long before he had an office in the State House, he understood that leadership was about standing with people whose voices were being ignored.

That same commitment followed him to Beacon Hill.

The legislative record is there for anyone interested in facts rather than selective memory. Ben Swan pursued legislation concerning domestic-violence services and assistance for survivors. He advocated racial balance in charter schools. He sought reforms involving the treatment of incarcerated people, mandatory minimum sentencing and the recording of police booking procedures. He proposed the creation of a Massachusetts Innocence Commission to examine wrongful prosecutions and convictions. He pursued protections involving historic-district foreclosures, assistance for veterans, economic relief for small businesses and programs designed to help disadvantaged families achieve long-term economic stability.

He also understood something that some people discussing “standards” today apparently overlook: Black political representation should preserve Black history and build Black institutions. Among his legislative efforts was a proposal to acquire land for an Underground Railroad, civil-rights and Black heritage museum in Springfield. That was not symbolic politics. That was an attempt to preserve our story, protect our memory and ensure that future generations understood the shoulders upon which they stood.

His advocacy was not confined to filing bills. During one budget cycle alone, he pursued millions of dollars in support for organizations serving Springfield, including programs addressing housing, employment, veterans, education, public health, cultural development, youth services and Black economic development. His concern was not simply whether government spent money, but whether communities historically denied resources received their fair share. That was the Ben Swan standard.

And there was another dimension to that standard that matters profoundly today: integrity.

My uncle understood elected office as public service, not personal entitlement. His long public career was not defined by using political power as a personal ATM, by rewarding friends and punishing enemies, or by treating government as an instrument of personal vendetta. His reputation was built on advocacy, independence, constituent service and an unwavering identification with the people he represented.

There is something powerful about serving in public life for decades and being remembered principally for the people you helped rather than the controversies you created.

When Congressman Richard Neal memorialized Ben Swan in the Congressional Record after his death, he remembered a man who championed school desegregation, fought for police reform, stood up for the homeless and working poor, and made himself accessible to constituents whether they came through his office door or encountered him on the street. He also remembered Ben Swan as a mentor whose influence helped lead others into public service.

That is a standard. A standard is not merely political influence. It is what you do with influence. A standard is not simply knowing powerful people. It is whether powerless people know they can call you.

A standard is not how effectively you navigate the halls of government for yourself. It is how effectively you navigate those halls for the mother facing eviction, the senior struggling with bureaucracy, the young person looking for opportunity, the neighborhood organization fighting for resources, the Black business seeking access and the family that simply needs somebody in government to answer the telephone and care.

Ben Swan did that work for 22 years.

He was not perfect. No human being is. Nor does his legacy require exaggeration. The documented record is strong enough on its own. He was a civil-rights activist before he was a politician. He carried that activism into elected office. He served for more than two decades. He championed causes that were often politically unpopular. He remained deeply connected to Springfield. He used his position to advocate for people who too often lacked access to power. And after leaving office, he did not have to manufacture a legacy because he had already lived one.

That is why I will not sit silently while conversations about the political history of the 11th Hampden District leap from Raymond Jordan directly into the present as though Benjamin Swan’s 22 years of service somehow disappeared.

They did not disappear. The people he served remember. The organizations he supported remember. The activists who worked beside him remember. The elected officials he mentored remember. The legislative record remembers. And his family certainly remembers.

There is a broader lesson here. Black communities must be extremely careful about surrendering custody of our history to people willing to edit it according to current political alliances. Once we allow personal loyalties, rivalries or contemporary political agendas to determine which Black leaders are remembered and which are erased, we participate in the very historical revisionism we condemn when others do it to us.

We do not have to choose between our ancestors. Raymond Jordan deserves his flowers. Benjamin Swan deserves his. Springfield is fortunate enough to have produced more than one consequential Black political leader, and the measure of our maturity should be our ability to tell the complete story rather than construct a mythology that requires somebody else’s erasure.

So, yes, let us talk about a standard for the 11th Hampden District. Let us demand representatives who know their community. Let us demand representatives who understand Black history and Black struggle. Let us demand representatives who fight for resources rather than simply access. Let us demand representatives who are accessible when there is no election approaching. Let us demand representatives whose independence cannot be purchased by political favor. Let us demand representatives who understand that public office is a public trust, not a personal possession. Let us demand representatives who can serve for years without forgetting whom they serve.

And while we are discussing that standard, say his name:

Benjamin Swan.

Twenty-two years in the Massachusetts Legislature. Civil-rights leader. Former NAACP president. Advocate. Mentor. Servant of Springfield. My uncle.

His political adversaries are free to dislike his politics. They are free to dislike his independence. They are even free to dislike the Swan name. What they are not free to do is erase 22 years of history. If the conversation is about the standard of leadership in the 11th Hampden District, then the historical record demands that Benjamin Swan be part of that conversation.

And as long as I have a voice, he will be.

There is an ugly ritual in America that has become so predictable that it hardly surprises anyone anymore. A Black person dies under suspicious, controversial, or violent circumstances. Questions immediately arise, families search for answers, and the public demands accountability. Yet before the investigation is complete, before the truth is fully known, and often before the victim has even been buried, the media begins putting someone on trial. More often than not, that someone is not the shooter, not the officer, not the person who may bear responsibility for the death. It is the victim.

We are watching that ritual unfold once again in the death of Nolan Wells.

The latest headlines do not explain how Nolan died. They do not tell us why he was the only one who failed to return from Horn Island. They do not explain why his cellphone was recovered without him or why an independent autopsy was unable to determine his cause of death. Those remain the central questions of the investigation. Yet instead of focusing on those unanswered questions, major news outlets chose to emphasize allegations that Nolan had consumed a “heavy” amount of alcohol before his disappearance.

One has to ask why.

The answer is painfully familiar because America has done this before. When a Black person dies under mysterious or controversial circumstances, too many media organizations begin searching for information that can subtly shift public sympathy away from the victim. Rather than centering the unresolved questions surrounding the death, they begin examining the victim’s private life, searching for anything that can cast doubt on his character or suggest, however subtly, that he somehow contributed to his own fate.

If reports are accurate that virtually every teenager on that island had been drinking, and the very witnesses describing Nolan’s alcohol consumption had themselves been drinking, why is Nolan’s alleged alcohol intake the headline? His cause of death remains officially undetermined. Toxicology results have not been released. The investigation remains active. None of those unanswered questions are addressed by telling the public how much alcohol he may have consumed. Instead, the headline serves another purpose: it plants a seed in the public’s mind that perhaps Nolan bears some responsibility for whatever happened to him.

We have seen this pattern repeatedly.

When Trayvon Martin was killed, America was not simply asked to consider whether George Zimmerman was justified in shooting an unarmed seventeen-year-old. The media began publishing Trayvon’s text messages, discussing marijuana, speculating about “lean,” and circulating photographs that portrayed him in the least sympathetic light possible. The national conversation gradually shifted away from why a teenager carrying Skittles and iced tea had been killed and toward whether Trayvon Martin had made mistakes common to many adolescents. It was an effort to place the victim’s character on trial instead of focusing exclusively on the circumstances surrounding his death.

The same strategy emerged after Botham Jean was killed inside his own apartment by Dallas police officer Amber Guyger. Jean had committed no crime. He was sitting in his own home when an officer entered the wrong apartment and shot him to death. Yet investigators executed a search warrant on Botham Jean’s apartment, and headlines quickly emphasized that marijuana had been found there. One has to ask what relevance that discovery had to the central question before the public. Marijuana did not cause Amber Guyger to enter the wrong apartment. Marijuana did not fire the fatal shots. Its significance was not evidentiary; it was rhetorical. It served only to tarnish the reputation of a man who was no longer alive to defend himself.

George Floyd’s murder followed the same script. Millions of people watched Derek Chauvin kneel on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd repeatedly pleaded that he could not breathe. The official medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, and a jury convicted Chauvin of murder. Yet countless headlines and commentators focused relentlessly on fentanyl in Floyd’s system, implying that drugs, rather than the officer’s actions, were responsible for his death. Although those arguments were presented in court, the jury rejected them. Nevertheless, the media’s emphasis accomplished exactly what it was intended to accomplish: it invited the public to question whether George Floyd was somehow responsible for his own death.

This pattern is the real story.

Defenders of this type of reporting often insist that journalists are simply presenting facts. That argument misses the point entirely. Journalism is not merely about reporting facts; it is about editorial judgment. Every newsroom decides which facts deserve headlines, which belong in the opening paragraphs, and which deserve only passing mention. When Black victims die, editors too often choose to highlight marijuana, alcohol, old text messages, juvenile mistakes, social media posts, or toxicology reports — details that frequently have little or nothing to do with the actual question of criminal responsibility.

The effect is unmistakable. Readers are subtly encouraged to conclude that the victim “wasn’t perfect,” as though perfection were somehow a prerequisite for justice. Yet when the victim is Black, imperfection becomes front-page news, while the conduct of those responsible for the death often becomes secondary.

That is why the coverage of Nolan Wells deserves careful scrutiny. Nolan cannot answer the allegations being circulated about him. His parents cannot ask him what happened that night. His family continues to wait for definitive answers about how their son died. The cause of his death remains unknown, yet headlines have already begun shaping public perception of his character rather than illuminating the unanswered questions surrounding his disappearance.

America has seen this before. It happened to Trayvon Martin. It happened to Botham Jean. It happened to George Floyd. And now, before investigators have answered the most important questions, it appears to be happening to Nolan Wells.

The question the nation should be asking is not how much Nolan Wells drank that evening. The question is far simpler and far more important:

What happened to Nolan Wells?

Until that question is answered, every attempt to redirect public attention from the circumstances of his death to the character of the victim deserves to be viewed with skepticism. History has shown us that when the victim becomes the suspect in the court of public opinion, justice is often the first casualty.

OutKick wants America to believe it’s a sports website.

Sports.

Football. Basketball. Baseball. The games people play.

Yet somehow, this “sports” publication repeatedly finds time to write about me — a Black bishop whose ministry is centered on preaching the Gospel and confronting injustice.

I’m not an NFL analyst.

I’m not an NBA commentator.

I’m not a sports executive.

I’m a pastor.

So why am I news to a sports outlet?

The answer becomes clearer when you understand what OutKick has become.

Owned by Fox Corporation, OutKick long ago expanded beyond scores and highlights into a steady stream of culture-war commentary. Race. DEI. “Wokeness.” Black Lives Matter. Education. Politics. Social issues. Their business model increasingly depends on convincing readers that anyone who speaks honestly about systemic racism is somehow the real problem.

That’s why they have repeatedly targeted voices like Ryan Clark.

Clark wasn’t simply discussing cover-two defenses or quarterback ratings. He also challenged racial double standards and spoke unapologetically about issues affecting Black America. Whether one agrees with every opinion he expressed is beside the point. The pattern is that outspoken Black voices become recurring targets.

The irony is difficult to ignore.

The publication that claims to be about sports spends an extraordinary amount of time policing Black speech.

If a Black pastor preaches against racism, they notice.

If a Black athlete discusses inequality, they notice.

If a Black commentator challenges injustice, they notice.

Apparently, justice has become a sports story — but only when Black people talk about it.

Perhaps that’s because the issue was never really sports.

The issue has always been whose voices are considered acceptable.

If preaching against injustice bothers a sports outlet more than actual injustice bothers them, perhaps they should stop pretending sports is what they’re really covering.

Because when a sports website spends this much energy chasing pastors instead of points, rebounds, and touchdowns, it’s no longer just covering sports.

It’s participating in America’s culture wars while wearing a sports jersey.

There is a tragic misalignment happening in too many Black pulpits right now.

While America is sliding backward toward a neo — Jim Crow reality — through voter suppression, the dismantling of civil rights protections, the erasure of Black history, mass firings of Black federal workers, and the slashing of healthcare, cancer research, elder care, and programs for children and the poor — a cadre of Black preachers have chosen a different crusade.

They are obsessed with theatrically sentencing members of fraternities and sororities to hell, critiquing who’s wearing what, castigating Jasmine Crockett as “ghetto,” and chasing clicks, likes, and viral outrage while the nation is on fire.

This is not courage. This is not holiness. This is dereliction of duty.

A Sacred Calling Reduced to Social Media Theater

Preaching has always been sacred work in the Black tradition. The pulpit was never meant to be a gossip column, a grievance factory, or a stage for theological malpractice dressed up as “truth telling.” It was meant to help our people make sense of suffering, resist oppression, and survive systems designed to destroy them.

Yet today, while. america’s so-called representative democracy is in shambles and Black communities are bearing the brunt, some preachers are more animated about policing hemlines and Greek letters than confronting white supremacy, economic exploitation, or state-sanctioned cruelty.

Ironically, many of these same preachers wag their fingers at justice-centered pastors and liberation theologians, telling us to “just preach the gospel,” as if liberation isn’t the gospel. That argument collapses under even a casual reading of Scripture.

What the Gospel Actually Says

Jesus did not define the gospel as respectability politics or ritualistic moralism. He defined it plainly in Luke 4:

Good news to the poor

Freedom for the captives

Healing of the sick

Release for the oppressed

If the message being preached does not engage those realities, it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is religious noise.

The Bible does not say that belonging to fraternities or sororities sends anyone to hell. But it is unmistakably clear about the eternal consequences of lying, sexual violence, abuse, exploitation, and injustice.

And yet, preachers who thunder about “worldliness” routinely make excuses for liars, predators, rapists, and abusers, especially when they are politically useful, wealthy, or aligned with power.

That hypocrisy is not accidental. It is ideological.

While the World Is on Fire

This moral negligence becomes even more indefensible when placed against the global backdrop.

Nigeria is being bombed.

Venezuela is being destabilized.

American foreign policy is once again putting Black and brown lives, and American travelers, at risk across the globe.

At home, healthcare is being stripped from millions, voting rights are under siege, Black workers are being purged from federal employment — one of the few sectors where Black representation exceeded population share and provided real pathways to the middle class.

And still, we have preachers livestreaming hell sermons about Greek life.

That is not prophetic.

That is performative irrelevance.

The Sacred Duty of Black Preachers in This Moment

Every calling has a sacred duty — the unspoken responsibility that history will hold you accountable for when the moment passes. In this moment, the sacred duty of Black preachers is not to go viral. It is to tell the truth. It is to preach salvation that actually saves, liberation that actually frees, and empowerment that helps people survive and resist unjust systems.

The Black church was never meant to be a refuge for cowardice or a sanctuary for distraction. When preachers abandon justice for fluffernutter, they are not being neutral, they are siding with oppression through silence and misdirection.And the people in the pews must demand better.

They must demand preaching that speaks to real suffering, real threats, and real hope, not sermons engineered for social media outrage while America burns.

Because in times like these, failure to make the main thing the main thing is not a harmless mistake. It is a betrayal of the sacred calling itself.

There is a crisis unfolding in the Black Church that does not get nearly enough attention — not because it is insignificant, but because it is inconvenient to those who benefit from it. A growing number of Black preachers have chosen political loyalty, proximity to whiteness, and alignment with authoritarian power over prophetic truth, historical honesty, and responsibility to Black people.

They are not merely silent in the face of injustice.

They are actively hostile to those who refuse to be silent.

Black liberation theology, justice-centered preaching, and sermons that name oppression are being attacked not by white evangelicals alone, but by Black preachers who have decided that defending Donald Trump and white Christian nationalism is more important than defending Black lives, Black history, and Black dignity.

This is not accidental.

This is ideological collaboration.

These sellout pulpits dismiss Black liberation theology as “divisive,” “unbiblical,” or “political,” while simultaneously excusing or outright defending policies that are actively harming Black communities right now. They condemn prophetic preaching as “woke,” yet show no such concern for the morality of power when that power is erasing history, stripping healthcare, silencing oversight, and crushing the most vulnerable.

Consider what is happening in real time.

Across the country, there is a coordinated effort to erase Black history — to ban books, sanitize curricula, defund DEI initiatives, and outlaw honest teaching about slavery, racism, and systemic inequality. This is not about accuracy; it is about control. A people who do not know their history are easier to dominate. And yet, many of the same Black preachers who rail against liberation theology have nothing to say about this erasure. Their silence is not theological — it is political.

At the same time, healthcare access is being systematically weakened. Programs that disproportionately serve Black, poor, elderly, and disabled communities are being cut or threatened. Medicaid expansions are resisted. Public health infrastructure is hollowed out. Lives are literally on the line. But from the sellout pulpit, there is no urgency, no lament, no righteous anger — only sermons about personal responsibility divorced from structural reality.

Even more alarming is the refusal to allow the Department of Justice to investigate rogue police departments with documented patterns of abuse, racism, and violence. Federal oversight — one of the few tools historically used to restrain local law enforcement terror — is being weakened or outright blocked. Black bodies are left vulnerable, families are left grieving, and communities are left unprotected. Yet the preachers who claim to “stand on the Bible” suddenly find Romans 13 far more compelling than the prophets crying out against unjust rulers.

Then there is the economic violence.

Over 400,000 Black women have been laid off from federal employment, stripping families of stability, healthcare, pensions, and dignity. Black women, who have long been the backbone of both the federal workforce and Black households, are once again paying the price for political cruelty masquerading as efficiency. And still, from the sellout pulpit, there is no word. No advocacy. No solidarity. No acknowledgment that these women are sitting in their pews every Sunday.

Instead, these preachers reserve their strongest language for fellow Black clergy — men and women who dare to preach that God cares about injustice, that faith must confront systems, and that salvation is not just about heaven but about life here and now.

This is where the betrayal becomes unmistakable.

Black liberation theology has never been about revenge against white people. It has always been about God’s preferential concern for the oppressed, the moral demand of justice, and the refusal to accept suffering as God’s will. It is rooted in the Exodus, the prophetic tradition, the ministry of Jesus, and the declaration of Luke 4:18. To attack it while defending policies and ideologies that produce suffering is not theological disagreement — it is theological fraud.

What we are witnessing is not courage, but cowardice baptized as protection of the gospel.

These preachers punch sideways —attacking Black scholars, Black activists, and Black clergy — while never punching at white Christian nationalism, authoritarian politics, or racialized policy violence. They confuse submission with holiness, silence with faithfulness, and proximity to power with divine favor.

And the cost is devastating.

Black congregants are being discipled into political confusion, spiritual passivity, and moral compromise. They are being taught to endure injustice quietly, to distrust their own historical memory, and to view any demand for justice as rebellion against God. This is not gospel formation — it is spiritual containment.

The Black Church was never meant to be a chaplain to empire. It was born in resistance, forged in struggle, and sustained by a faith that believed God was on the side of the enslaved, the segregated, the beaten, and the forgotten. To abandon that legacy is not progress — it is apostasy from our own story.

History has always exposed sellout pulpits for what they are.

And it will do so again.

The question is not whether these preachers will be welcomed by power — they already are. The question is whether they will be able to explain to future generations why they chose comfort over calling, access over accountability, and empire over liberation — while Black people paid the price

On October 14, Congress invites the nation to “remember” Charlie Kirk. The Senate has already blessed the day as a “National Day of Remembrance,” and the House passed a resolution praising his “life and legacy.” Ninety-five Democrats voted yes; 58 said no; 38 said “present”; 26 didn’t vote at all. In Massachusetts, only Ayanna Pressley and Seth Moulton voted no. The rest — who brand themselves as progressive — chose otherwise. That vote isn’t neutrality. That vote is a message.

I do not celebrate the taking of a life. Assassination is evil. But remembrance without truth becomes idolatry. To canonize a public figure while ignoring the harm they did — especially to Black people — is not compassion; it’s complicity.

Charlie Kirk built a platform that demeaned Black dignity, smeared civil rights protections, and stoked the politics of grievance. In his own words he mocked “prowling Blacks,” derided the Civil Rights Act as a “huge mistake,” and fueled replacement-style panic. Those aren’t slips of the tongue; that’s a program. Elevating that record as a model for youth signals whose pain counts and whose doesn’t.

So when the Massachusetts delegation — save Pressley and Moulton — voted to honor Kirk, it cut deep. You can’t preach equity on Monday and bless the whitewashing of racist rhetoric on Friday. That’s not “big tent politics.” That’s betrayal.

And I must address a second wound: the chorus of religious voices who rushed to anoint Kirk as a “good Christian,” a “martyr,” or a sainted culture warrior. Some clergy, including Black conservative pastors with public platforms, cast him as a model of faith and suggested his death should galvanize a new era of Christian activism. Others praised his “bold voice for Jesus” while sidestepping his record on race. That is not the Gospel I know. That’s religious nationalism laundering politics.

Thank God for the many Black pastors who told the truth: condemn the killing, yes — while refusing to turn Kirk into a martyr or to call darkness light. They reminded America that dying violently does not sanctify a lifetime of divisive words. That witness — rooted in justice, not partisanship — is the church at its best.

I’m also grieved by prominent Black public figures who, in the immediate aftermath, offered commentary that read as soft-pedaling his racism in the name of “civility.” I saw the viral clip and posts where Van Jones publicized Kirk’s last message about having a “respectful conversation,” and media framed it as a touching outreach across differences. Civility is valuable; it is not absolution. We can promote nonviolence and still tell the truth about a man’s record.

Let me be plain: October 14 cannot become a moral gag order. We reject political violence and we reject rewriting history. We mourn a life taken and we refuse to applaud a legacy that demeaned Black people, immigrants, Muslims, and anyone who didn’t fit a narrow vision of America. Remembrance without repentance becomes propaganda.

What should our leaders have done? Offer a narrowly tailored resolution condemning political violence — full stop — without praising Kirk as a “model for young Americans.” Instead, the House adopted glowing language that erases the harm of his rhetoric. That’s not statesmanship; that’s sanctification of a brand.

To my Massachusetts delegation: explain your votes. Look your Black constituents in the eye and say whether Kirk’s words were acceptable to you — or were outweighed by the politics of the moment. Then do better. Champion policies and proclamations that defend truth, protect the vulnerable, and refuse to launder racism under the bleach of “remembrance.”

Faith demands more. Democracy requires more. Our children deserve more.

Charlie Kirk is dead. His life ended violently, and as a man of faith, I cannot and will not celebrate that. Murder is evil. Life is sacred. But I also refuse to be gaslit into mourning someone who built his career by denying my people’s humanity and advancing rhetoric that caused real harm to Black lives.

Charlie Kirk did not simply hold “conservative values.” He spent his public life mocking the suffering of Black people. He justified the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others by shifting blame onto the victims, questioning their character, or defending the systems that took their lives. He never expressed compassion for those grieving families. He never acknowledged their pain. He never considered their humanity. Yet now, we are expected to drape his memory in compassion and reverence as though he were some misunderstood prophet. That is not just hypocritical — it is insulting.

The irony could not be sharper. A man who showed no compassion in the face of Black death is now being framed as a martyr whose death demands our silence, sympathy, and sanctification. It is yet another example of how white lives are treated with dignity, even when those lives were dedicated to stripping dignity from others, while Black lives are endlessly scrutinized, rationalized, and dismissed.

Even more disturbing is watching some Black clergy rush to show compassion for Charlie Kirk in his death — more compassion than he ever extended to the Black bodies brutalized by police, hunted down in the streets, or suffocated under the weight of racism. These same pastors provide spiritual leadership to congregations full of the very people Kirk despised, yet their reverence in this moment reinforces the lie that whitenized Christianity demands Black submission, even to those who openly dehumanize us. That is pastoral malpractice. That is complicity dressed up as piety.

Let us also confront the facts: Charlie Kirk was not killed by a Black man, a Brown man, an immigrant, or a trans person — the groups he demonized daily. He was murdered by a white man, at a white college, in a white state. Yet who is being threatened in the wake of his death? Black people. HBCUs. Black churches. Black organizations. Once again, white violence is excused or deflected, while Black communities are forced to live under the shadow of suspicion and attack.

This is not a call to celebrate his death. This is not a call to vengeance. It is a call for moral clarity. We must reject the demand to sanitize his legacy. We must refuse the gaslighting that insists compassion for a man who denied ours is the only “Christian” response.

The Bible teaches us that “silence in the face of evil is complicity.” Mourning must never become a cloak for erasure. Compassion must never require us to compromise truth. And clergy — especially Black clergy — must never demand reverence for those who dehumanized the very people they are called to shepherd.

Charlie Kirk’s death does not absolve his life’s work. His words remain, his influence endures, and the damage continues. If we are to honor life, we must honor it by telling the truth — even when the truth is uncomfortable, even when it offends false unity, even when it means refusing to sanctify the memory of those who stood against justice.

I will not celebrate Charlie Kirk’s death. But I will not mourn him either. What I will do is continue to honor the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and every Black soul dehumanized by the lies he defended. And I will continue to demand that the church — especially the Black church — stand with the oppressed, not with those who despised them.

By Bishop Talbert Swan

Eight months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, the mask has completely slipped. His recent decision to deploy the National Guard to Washington, D.C., under the guise of a “manufactured emergency,” is not merely an overreach of executive power — it is a calculated move pulled straight from the fascist playbook. This is not about “restoring order” or “protecting the public.” It is about projecting dominance, criminalizing dissent, and sending a message to Black leadership across this nation: fall in line or face the iron fist of state power.

This deployment was not an isolated act. Trump coupled it with threats against five other U.S. cities — every single one led by a Black mayor. This pattern is impossible to ignore. It is a direct assault on Black political power, a modern-day echo of the old Reconstruction-era strategy: punish Black leadership, intimidate Black voters, and reassert white supremacist control over the levers of government.

The Fascist Playbook in Real Time

Authoritarians have long used manufactured crises to consolidate power. Mussolini and Hitler understood that you don’t need a real emergency — just the perception of one, repeated loudly and often enough for people to believe it. Trump has mastered this tactic. By stoking fear, inventing chaos, and portraying Black-led cities as “out of control,” he lays the groundwork for federal crackdowns and the erosion of local self-governance.

This is the same Donald Trump who has already:

• Pushed through the “Big Beautiful Bill” that gutted social safety nets, slashed Medicaid, and disproportionately harmed Black and brown communities.

• Launched mass deportations targeting Black and brown immigrants, ripping families apart with militarized ICE raids.

• Signed executive orders dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and erasing Black history from federal programs and institutions.

• Used federal agencies as political weapons against journalists, protestors, and political opponents.

• Greenlit gerrymandering schemes designed to dilute Black political representation in Congress.

Now, he is using the National Guard and the threat of military force against cities that dared to elect Black leadership. This is not law enforcement — it is racialized political warfare.

The Historical Continuum of White Supremacist Power

The parallels to history are chilling. After the Civil War, Black political power surged during Reconstruction — until white supremacist terror campaigns and government-backed disenfranchisement crushed it. Federal troops that were once deployed to protect newly freed Black citizens were later withdrawn, ushering in the Jim Crow era.

Today, Trump is weaponizing those same federal forces not to protect democracy, but to intimidate and undermine it. In less than a year, America has been dragged backward, away from the fragile progress we fought for over generations, toward an openly fascist, racist dictatorship.

This is Bigger Than Black America — But It Starts With Us

Let’s be clear: this is a Black issue, but it is not only a Black issue. When a president can single out leaders because of their race, when he can send armed forces to occupy a city without cause, when he can threaten elected officials for daring to govern their communities as they see fit — it is not just Black political power under siege, it is democracy itself.

If they can do it to Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, to Oakland, to New York, to New Los Angeles, they can do it to any city, any mayor, any movement.

We Cannot Be Silent

To my fellow Black Americans: our history has taught us that silence in the face of oppression is complicity. We must organize, mobilize, and resist with the urgency of people who know that their survival is at stake — because it is.

To all people of good will: you cannot sit this one out. Fascism does not stop at the city limits of Black America. It will consume everything in its path unless it is met with sustained, united resistance.

We must:

• Flood the streets in protest, making it clear that authoritarian overreach will be met with mass mobilization.

• Challenge these actions in court, using every legal tool available to block the erosion of local governance.

• Support Black mayors and elected officials under siege, both financially and politically.

• Vote in overwhelming numbers at every level of government, ensuring that those who support this tyranny are removed from power.

• Build coalitions across race, faith, and ideology to form an unbreakable wall against fascism.

The Moral Imperative

We are living in a moment that will define whether America remains a democracy or becomes a full-fledged autocracy draped in the American flag. Scripture reminds us: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees” (Isaiah 10:1). As people of conscience, we cannot let the forces of white supremacy and authoritarianism dictate our future.

We must also be honest about the stakes. This is not the normal ebb and flow of partisan politics. This is a coordinated, deliberate dismantling of the very institutions that were designed to keep authoritarianism at bay. The Department of Justice is being bent into a political weapon. Federal law enforcement agencies are being unleashed on perceived enemies while allies of the regime operate with impunity. Federal oversight in civil rights enforcement has been gutted, leaving Black communities more vulnerable than they have been in decades.

We are watching, in real time, the dismantling of the guardrails of democracy. And history has shown us that once those guardrails are gone, they do not easily return. When fascism takes root, it doesn’t simply fade away — it must be torn out by the people, through costly and sustained struggle.

Trump’s authoritarian project is not confined to racial intimidation alone; it is tied to a broader war on truth itself. From purging school curricula of Black history to silencing journalists who challenge his lies, this administration understands that control over information is as critical to fascist power as control over the military. If the public can be conditioned to accept propaganda as fact and view dissent as treason, then repression becomes not only possible, but popular.

And make no mistake — Trump’s targeting of Black mayors is part of the same strategy that drives his attacks on immigrants, Muslims, women’s rights, and voting access. By fracturing the coalition of those who believe in a multiracial democracy, he hopes to make each group fight for survival in isolation, rather than unite in resistance.

This is why coalition-building is not optional — it is essential. Black communities have historically been the moral compass and organizing backbone of democratic movements in America. But our struggle is strengthened when we lock arms with labor unions fighting corporate exploitation, with immigrants resisting deportation raids, with students challenging censorship, with rural communities crushed by the same policies that hollow out our cities. The enemy of democracy thrives on division. Our power comes from solidarity.

The hour is late, but it is not too late. Every generation has faced its test. Ours has arrived more swiftly and more brutally than many expected. But like our ancestors who fought slavery, who marched against Jim Crow, who bled for the right to vote, we are called to meet this moment with the same courage and resolve.

If we fail to rise now, the vision of America as a multiracial democracy will not simply be delayed — it will be destroyed. And we will be remembered not only for what was taken from us, but for what we surrendered through our inaction.

This is the time to decide: will we be the generation that let fascism solidify its grip on American soil, or the generation that broke it before it could break us? The answer will not be written by presidents or pundits. It will be written by the people who chose to stand when it mattered most.

History is watching. The world is watching. Our children are watching. And the call could not be clearer — stand up, speak out, and fight back, while there is still something left to save.