Let’s confront history — not the whitewashed version, but the raw, unfiltered truth of what was done to African people and the land they were forced to build.
The disconnect Americans have from this reality is staggering, and that very disconnect is part of the drug.
Do you believe Africans weren’t living full, self-determined lives before colonial violence tore through the continent? Do you think we didn’t have thriving cultures, systems, and autonomy?
Well, we did. Prior to colonization, we had governments and laws. An interruption came in the form of kidnappings. Let’s call it what it was: violent abduction. Not “labor migration,” not “transportation,” but the theft of human beings. Families ripped apart. People chained, beaten, mutilated. Women violated. Children stolen.
Then came the ships — floating tombs of horror. Human beings stacked like cargo, suffocating in their own waste, blood, and tears. Women menstruating without dignity. Children crying. Bodies decomposing beside the living. Some chose the sea over bondage. It was genocide on water.
And on those ships, the torment didn’t stop. They were forced to “dance” on deck as “exercise” to survive long enough to be sold. Those who resisted were thrown overboard. And when they reached the colonies, the nightmare only deepened.
What awaited them wasn’t freedom, Democracy, or opportunity. It was fascism. Let’s be clear: it wasn’t democracy. It was a dictatorship. Total control. Whips, auctions, rape, forced breeding, and back-breaking labor. No rights. No humanity.
Even after slavery was “abolished,” the violence of whiteness didn’t end — it evolved. Reconstruction was a brief, fragile moment of hope for Americans, a time when we fought to build lives and claim the rights we were owed. But whiteness couldn’t allow that.
The promise of 40 acres and a mule? Never fulfilled. Newly emancipated, formerly enslaved Africans were left to navigate a hostile and oppressive society with no land, no resources, and no support. This land, which could have been the foundation of generational wealth and stability, was denied to them. Instead, white Europeans were invited to homestead on stolen Indigenous land, given government support, and encouraged to build futures for their families.
Meanwhile, emancipated Africans were terrorized, lynched, and systematically denied access to the very resources they had earned through centuries of stolen labor.
Laws like the Black Codes and later Jim Crow crushed any progress we tried to make. Our businesses were burned. Our communities were destroyed. We were forced into sharecropping — a new form of economic enslavement. And when we tried to resist or assert our humanity, whiteness responded with violence.
And yet, we kept resisting. The Civil Rights Movement was not just a fight for dignity—it was a fight for survival. Americans organized, marched, sat in, and risked their lives to demand what should have been ours from the beginning: equality under the law. We fought for the right to vote, to live where we chose, to send our children to schools that weren’t falling apart.
But even then, whiteness found ways to suppress us. The Voting Rights Act was gutted. Gerrymandering and voter suppression became the new whips and chains. Taxation without representation reared its head, as communities paid into systems that refused to represent us, refused to fund our schools, and refused to repair the roads we drove on.
Under Nixon, whiteness took another insidious turn. Peaceful protests — a cornerstone of the Civil Rights Movement — were criminalized under the guise of “law and order.” Nixon’s administration targeted leaders and activists, painting them as threats to national security. The War on Drugs was weaponized to destabilize communities, creating a cycle of criminalization and incarceration that continues to this day.
Today, whiteness, a made-up social construct, hides behind bureaucracy and policy, but make no mistake—it’s the same system of control. It’s the same fascism dressed in a suit and tie. We are taxed, policed, and surveilled without being truly heard or represented. Our communities are over-policed and underfunded. nd when we rise up, when we demand change, we are met with the same violence and suppression that has always been used to keep us in our place.
The drug called whiteness makes people think about the notion that their Democracy somehow works for Blacks or any other group that does not identify as white.
You don’t think Africans recognized fascism back then, just because they didn’t have the word for it? You think they thought, “This is just how things are”? No. They knew. We’ve always known. And we’ve always resisted — in shackles, in maroon camps, in fields, in protests, in policy, in song, and in silence. Resistance is woven into our survival.
This is why discussions like The Honest Series are critical. We must ask ourselves hard questions: Are we open to expanding how we see ourselves? Are we aware of our own privilege and resources? These conversations are not just philosophical — they are the foundation of equity in policy. By developing evidence-based solutions for poverty and inequity, we can begin to dismantle the systems that whiteness built. We can create expert recommendations to improve outcomes and eliminate systemic discrimination.
Here’s the irony: white people are now rising up against fascism based on what happened in EUROPE, like it’s some new phenomenon in America. It’s not. Black Americans know Fascism on this soil.
Protesting authoritarianism, voter suppression, and police violence — all things we’ve been warning you about for centuries. Where were you? Why did it take these systems turning on ‘you’ for you to care?
At your rallies, you might not see many faces like ours. And you wonder why. It’s because we’ve been sounding the alarm while you ignored it. While you benefited from it. While you called it “the system working as intended.”
Whiteness is a powerful drug. It’s what allowed you to ignore the screams from the hull of a ship. It’s what let you believe this country was ever fair. It’s what makes you think fascism is new. But the truth? Americans have been living under it. Dying under it. Screaming under it. And you’ve been silent — or worse, complicit.
The land you call your country was never yours to begin with. It was colonized, stolen, and built on the backs of enslaved people. And now? You’re watching it crumble under the weight of its own lies.
Maybe it’s time for all of America to stop looking away. To stop pretending. To stop excusing. It’s time to look in the mirror and face what we’ve been saying all along. For all of us, fight white supremacy – save what’s left of your own colonized country.
Tasha Young is the founder and executive director of the Good Policy Institute, Host of Elevation Nation on Black Westchester Platforms & Principle, P31 Partners. Check out Whiteness Is A Powerful Drug Part 1
