APRIL 10, 2025 | OPINION | By Stecy Mwachia
Clause 52.222-21 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation titled “Prohibition of Segregated Facilities” reads “The Contractor agrees that it does not and will not maintain or provide for its employees any segregated facilities at any of its establishments, and that it does not and will not permit its employees to perform their services at any location under its control where segregated facilities are maintained.” In late March of 2025, the Trump Administration reportedly moved to strike down this clause through executive action, effectively rendering segregation within federal contract negotiations legal for the first time since 1963.
The National Institutes of Health recently presented a memo showing that the change is already in effect. Regarding a maintenance agreement for scientific freeze dryers, the GSA memo reads, “FAR 52.222-21, Prohibition of Segregated Facilities and FAR 52.222-26 — Equal Opportunity will not be considered when making award decisions or enforce requirements.”
While Black Americans and other people of color in the United States can still depend upon the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to maintain and codify their rights into law, as well as several state and federal statutes prohibiting the practice of segregation, this act is incredibly symbolic. It is evidence of one troubling truth, that this administration is not only capable of promoting and enabling racist rhetoric throughout society, but that it can and will make those ideas political realities if it is able.
Deborah Archer, president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York University School of Law, told the Washington Post in March that “Even presidents who were hostile to the civil rights agenda at least understood that they shouldn’t say it out loud … To have a President embrace a segregationist agenda is both dangerous and heartbreaking.”
We are at a junction in human history where progress isn’t being halted or paused, we are not regressing into the past as many people are saying. We are moving forward into the future, with a complete denial and disregard for what we already know and hold to be true. We are advancing into an age where willful ignorance, hatred and greed are seemingly becoming the means to accomplishing our goals, but they are a means to an end.
Black Americans have always been at the forefront of political movements in the United States, from the abolitionist movement to Japanese Internment to the Vietnam War and the Black Lives Matter movement.
In fact, crowdsourcing experts and Scholars say that the Black Lives Matter movement may have been the largest political movement in all of United States History.
Something is different about the “Hands-Off” movement formed in response to the Trump administration earlier this year. While many news articles have either not noticed this phenomenon or chosen not to highlight it during these times, you can see from photographs and by attending these events yourself that these protests have had very low attendance from Black Americans, if any at all. This is abnormal in this country’s 248-year-long history.
The majority of commentary on this massive flight away from political engagement has remained mostly on social media, contained within Black discussion circles. I aim to discuss why I feel Black Americans are fleeing from the front lines and detail the uncertain future of Black Americans in this current moment. It’s important to center the voices of Black Americans, and since this lack of political activity has made these voices harder to source in terms of political engagement, let’s see what we can glean from what the internet is saying.
On the “AskALiberal” Reddit thread, a user created a thread on April 4th, 2025, genuinely asking, “Black Community will not Participate in Hands-Off Protest?” The post has since been deleted by its original poster, but the thread and its responses remain.
Disclaimer: Since a majority of Reddit users maintain an anonymous status, there is no way to verify if these users are themselves Black Americans. Nevertheless, these responses hit at the core of the issue we are discussing, and as a Black American myself, these sentiments seem genuine enough for me to take them at face value. Use your best judgment and discretion.
A user named BettingBus responds, “A lot of Black folks understandably interpreted the visceral opposition to Harris against someone as transparently despicable as Trump as inextricably tied to racism. They’re historically used to feeling it from white people, but for other minority groups to abandon them? It’s a betrayal.” BettingBus continues to write, “They are and will continue to be a reliable Democratic voting bloc, but I can understand how some are just like ‘I need a break from this bc we’re always trying to fix the shit everyone else keeps breaking, and when it breaks, we’re always the first community affected.’”
Another user, Edgar_Brown, cleverly suggested that perhaps the Black community is coordinating this absence in an attempt to support the protest effort, writing, “It’s a strategic choice. People of color in general at this stage will make it easier for FSMAGA’s authoritarian circus to ignore and suppress the protests. If it’s mostly white people visible in all the images it will make it harder for them.”
One post that particularly stuck out to me was one by a user named Kirikylas, who beautifully expressed, “Dude we’re tired. A couple YouTube videos also aren’t indicative of 48ish million people either so that stance kinda makes me feel some type of way as well. For too long America has seen Black people being its conscience and fighting for change that helps everyone, while also denying how big a part we’ve played at all — a lot of us are quite literally just done saving white people from themselves and are directing energy towards repairing rifts in our own communities that we didn’t even make.” They also pointed out that when Black American protest they are met with violence from police. It may be that Black Americans are dedicating more time to figuring out how to navigate and survive recent political changes than they are spending trying to change those political outcomes. Or it could be that after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, Black people in the United States are more careful about their safety in protest environments.
This phenomenon is most perfectly spelled out in a 2025 article written by Toni Crowe published by Medium magazine, entitled, “Why Aren’t Black People Protesting?” She detailed the top four reasons she believes Black people are taking the bench from activist spaces.
Her list highlights several points: Trump’s Republican administration is acting as expected, constantly fueling racial tensions; DEI initiatives have failed to significantly benefit Black people, with white women and veterans benefiting the most; and the real target of powerful old white men is not Black people, but white women, as they seek to increase the white workforce in blue-collar industries.
Crowe’s article is a powerful critique that could not be more current and pressing for Americans today. At the core of Trump’s policies and platforms is a disenfranchisement of Black Americans, before anything else. We, the undesirables, the deplorables, get scapegoated while white Americans fight amongst themselves.
Black Americans are turning to their own communities and recuperating from the whiplash of feeling the relief of witnessing a Black man in the highest position in the world, to witnessing the renaissance of the Jim Crow era in only one decade.
There is a popular movement circulating liberal circles right now, that “rest is resistance.” I want you to know, dear white reader, that that movement is NOT for you.
YOU need to fight for us right now, because we are so tired.
When I say tired, I don’t just mean we are emotionally exhausted. Black people in the United States are more likely to suffer from stress-related chronic illnesses and complications than any other racial group. The constant stress and anxiety of not only having to survive an anti-black society, but feeling a social pressure to save ourselves and everyone else, has a severe impact on our nervous systems and our hearts, increasing our risk of strokes.
Whether it’s abortion access, LGBTQ or immigration rights, protesting for Occupied Palestine or the European-controlled Congo, supporting everyone and every cause is literally killing black americans.
Ultimately, Black Americans are the only demographic that can claim they did not elect Trump as an electoral block, as almost all other POC groups rose in support for his campaign significantly last year. According to the City Journal, “Trump carried 46 percent of the Latino vote, a 14-point increase from 2020. Asian support rose to 39 percent from 34 percent four years ago.” Meanwhile, support from Black Americans rose one point.
Something that I’ve always believed about the African American community in the United States, a feature I’ve always admired as a Kenyan immigrant, is that this is one of the only demographics of people in the entire world that I’ve seen advocating for seemingly all disenfranchised groups. From Stonewall to the Zoot-Suit riots, almost every progressive era the United States has experienced has been directly influenced by African Americans in some way.
That’s a rare thing to have as a cultural collective: the ability to value all people outside of your ingroup. The existence of African Americans in the United States and their behavior towards other ethnic groups, especially in the face of their treatment, challenges so many notions of innate selfish human behavior.
I know human life isn’t ‘nasty, brutish and short’ because the Black diaspora has shown me it never has to be. They are always the first to fight back against oppression in all forms, and I hope, as a Black American myself, I can be a part of continuing that legacy.
It’s a beautiful thing, a tragic and bittersweet one. To love a country that will never, ever love you back. Maybe that’s the truest form of patriotism of all.