In both my head and my heart, I knew that Donald Trump and MAGA were going to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats. For the last few years, I have desperately tried to warn the public of this growing reality. I am not a “doomsayer” or “alarmist.” I am a realist committed to democracy and the hard work it takes to protect it. Black Americans, as a people, deeply understand and carry this history and lived experience and the knowledge and burden of democracy as contingent and imperiled in our collective bodies, psyches, and memories. For us, America has only been a democracy for sixty years. As I often remind myself, there are white people alive right now who personally watched (and participated in) the lynchings of Black people during the Jim and Jane Crow terror regime. Unfortunately, too few Americans listened.
Even worse, as seen last Tuesday, there are tens of millions of Americans, who want what Trump and his fascist MAGA movement are offering. A week later, the words do not exist yet to accurately describe such a national and global tragedy.
