Project 2025 in Black and white

You might notice a subtle difference in how Black people are reacting to Project 2025 (a horror show that I addressed recently) and how white people are reacting. Or maybe you don’t. But I do. The thing is that most Black people, in my opinion, are reacting with far less panic or shock compared to white folks. It’s not that we as Black people are unaware of how bad Project 2025 is and how it telegraphs to us how horrific unchecked Republican control of government will be. My post linked to above barely scratched the surface. I didn’t even get into how the gameplan of Project 2025 would get rid of no-fault divorce laws and trap people (especially women) in abusive marriages. I didn’t address how they want to get rid of 30-year mortgages—you know, the kind that normal people can afford—which would put home ownership not only out of the hands of almost the entirety of Millennials and Gen Z but also out of the hands of Black people.

And those are still only two more items I didn’t mention among dozens—I imagine hundreds—of other things that benefit the most privileged and cut out the concerns and needs of the average person and that utterly dehumanize the marginalized.

The reason we as Black people aren’t more vocally shocked—the reason we aren’t clutching our pearls—is because we expected this. We’ve always expected this. Black people have never stopped being discriminated against, oppressed, unfairly characterized, marginalized or any of that other bad shit since the first African was snatched and brought over on a ship to be enslaved here.

Sure, things have gotten less horrific at various points, but we’re always losing new ground somewhere or being held back from gaining ground as fast as we can and should be able to—and the United States has never stopped being a place where Black people experience the impact of racism in some way pretty much 24/7. The only Black people who don’t are those who are incredibly insulated from the effects or racism and white supremacy and/or are in willful ignorance of it, and those folks are definitely in the minority.

So, yes, Project 2025’s goals and guidelines would absolutely make the lives of Black people worse. But we always expect things to get worse. We got some attention to our problems with the Black Lives Matter movement in its prime, but then we got pushed to the back burner with nothing solved and once again discrimination against us and harm to us increases. We expect that even under Democrats, things often get worse, with increased support of and militarization of the police, for example (which lots of Democrats endorse) even though police have not been at increased risk for a long time—and in fact have seen continued protection for abusing and killing people, especially Black people.

The thing with white people, by and large, is they aren’t used to being oppressed or discriminated against. There are some smaller marginalized groups of which white people represent a significant percentage who have dealt with horrific discrimination, oppression, and violence and would be even more severely impacted by Project 2025. Take trans people, for example. I mentioned in my post on Substack how the document calls for banning pornography and jailing anyone who distributes it. Well, it also basically characterizes all trans people as groomers and sex offenders and says that any depiction of trans people is by definition pornography. So, if a book in a library talks about trans people, even in a very casual and non-evocative way, it would be pornography, taken off the shelves and librarians jailed for allowing it to be there to begin with.

But again, white people in general are not used to this. They are finally seeing how abortion could become illegal everywhere and how they might not be able to divorce their spouses and how their romance/erotica novels might vanish and the authors be jailed and how the federal bureaucracy could literally become a gutted puppet-show for Trump and how they might not be able to buy a home without a winning lotto ticket and...and...and...

They so many of them just now seeing that the government could leave them behind or even oppress them. 

White people who are aware of and concerned about Project 2025 for the most part haven’t been listening for the past four decades. Black people and others have warned of what conservative forces were working toward. Particularly in the past 20 years we’ve talked about how local politics are important because it’s the breeding ground for future state and federal politicians and because local officials often hit us where it really hurt—schools and libraries and public services. Some white people listened; most didn’t.

So, hopefully now you really get it. Just don’t expect Black people or a lot of other marginalized groups to be outwardly showing their fear and concern for dramatic purposes. Because our expressions of our own plights and how they would one day become yours too never got your attention. We’re past clutching pearls. We’ve always been fighting and preparing for the worst. A lot of white people fought when convenient or didn’t stick with fights because they lost interest and some other shiny cause took them away. A lot of white people have been hoping and waiting for the system to right itself or checks and balances to protect them without recognizing that the system was being rigged all along and the protections for average people were being undermined.

So, if you get it now, you’d better keep getting it. And by that I mean for decades to come. There will be no quick solution or quick fix. We have a lot of muck to dig out of before we can even think of building a society that is truly just and equitable.

Also, don’t get distracted by the problems Project 2025 is facing. Yes, the Heritage Foundation—which is behind it—filed as a 501(c)(3) non-profit and, as such, should not only not  be involved in politics but shouldn’t be producing political manifestos. So yes, it’s in violation of IRS laws and could lose its tax-exempt status or be fined or worse. Yes, hackers released a lot of Heritage Foundation dirt. That includes evidence of some participants in drafting Project 2025 having ISP addresses in China, meaning that the Heritage Foundation is likely colluding with a foreign power to undermine the United States, which could mean some people being investigated by the FBI.

That’s all great, but don’t expect it to mean much. Project 2025 exists whether the Heritage Foundation goes down or not. It’s still the playbook for the Republicans. That won’t change. And anyone going to jail? Don’t hold your breath, because we could very well end up with a Trump presidency again soon, and if you think the FBI will be doing anything soon enough to beat the clock on that, you’re probably dreaming.

No, we’re in for the long haul and a fight that might take generations worth of work to truly sort out. If you simply want to live in a dystopia and struggle under authoritarian rule, just go ahead and let your attention wander or brush off Project 2025 as insane nonsense or something. If you want to salvage what’s left of democracy and try to reshape it into something better and strong, strap in and take this stuff as seriously as Black people have been telling you to for decades.