Why are the anti-Trump/Musk protests so white?

Black people know the laws of this country, including the First Amendment, still don’t apply to all its citizens.

The April 5 Hands Off rally in Knoxville, Tenn.

By Shalise Manza Young

Last Saturday, millions of Americans were part of well over 1,000 “Hands Off” protests. The protests took place in every state, in big cities and small towns, in deep-blue counties and areas that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in November.

And remarkably, there was no violence and few, if any, arrests.

But there weren’t a lot of Black people at these rallies. That’s not to say there were no Black people, but compared with the decades of work done by Black folk in the never-ending fight for civil rights, it’s noticeable how many stayed home.

And they will likely continue to stay home. Across social media, Black leaders and influencers—particularly women—have announced that they’re tired and, thus, content to sit things out for now.

For generations, Black women have been sounding the alarm, to no avail. Vice President Kamala Harris said again and again that Trump would be a revenge-seeking tyrant who would be terrible for the country, and 92 percent of Black women voted for her. Trump announced his intention to be a dictator and install the very tariffs his billionaire backers are whining about now. It all fell on deaf ears, and those who supported Trump because he was going to hurt other people are crying because they are the ones being hurt.

So, though everyone else can try to clean up the mess they made, we can’t sit out forever.

But there’s something else going on. This current wave of protests is going on without interference from law enforcement.

Look at Washington, D.C.: Organizers estimate roughly 100,000 people protested on the National Mall in a show of resistance to Trump, Elon Musk and the anti-democratic, economy-breaking, and often flat-out horrific steps they’re taking and policies they’re instituting.

And even though those people were there explicitly to protest Trump, who demands fealty from all, he has skin thinner than tissue paper and has the jurisdiction to influence law enforcement in the district, local and federal agencies that were there weren’t in riot gear. There’s no evidence they were trying to intimidate the citizens gathered to exercise their First Amendment rights.

It was a far cry from what we saw in 2020, during the summer of protests that stemmed from the brazen murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin. Stuck in their homes due to Covid, many Americans had a visceral reaction to images of Chauvin, his knee on Floyd’s neck, slowly killing him in full view of onlookers begging him to stop.

So, they took to the streets.

A few days after Floyd’s death, about 1,000 protesters were marching in D.C., calling for an end to police brutality and demanding justice. They paused at the White House, where metal barriers separating the marchers from law enforcement. Video appears to show that the barriers were pushed down by white marchers.

But that was all it took.

Over the following days, protesters were met with tear gas, pepper spray, shields, batons and rubber bullets, and 5,800 active-duty troops and agents from a variety of federal agencies descended on the city.

Then, on June 2, dozens of camo-clad soldiers met a crowd of about 2,000 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Hundreds were arrested during the subsequent week.

And, behind the scenes Trump was calling for officers to “crack their skulls!” and wanted then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper to shoot them.

And just to put a really fine point on it, in December that year, members of the Proud Boys and other violent pro-Trump white supremacist groups were roaming the streets of D.C. looking for fights. Though they assaulted multiple people, they were neither tear-gassed nor shot with rubber bullets. Those same groups were on hand on Jan. 6, 2021, when police and federal agencies knew there was a high likelihood of violence from the overwhelmingly white crowd but did little to prepare. They certainly weren’t met by dozens of camo-clad soldiers on the steps of the Capitol.

None of this is new, of course.

In 2022, the National Library of Medicine published a review of violence against Black Lives Matter protesters that said in part that violence against BLM activists “exists in historical continuity with other challenges to U.S. state legitimacy, including explicit attempts to undermine larger scale political projects for racial justice by groups like the Black Panther Party and others in the civil rights era.

“The data that currently exists on violence against BLM protestors is incomplete…. It is apparent, however, that BLM protestors, relative to other demonstrators, have been disproportionately affected by state and right-wing violence.”

The not-so-distant history of 2020 helps explain why Black people aren’t out in droves now; there’s a worry that Trump might be trying to goad the Black community with moves like ending a decades-long ban on segregated facilities in federal contracts, forcing the destruction of Black Lives Matter plaza in D.C., and putting a prohibition on tax dollars going toward things like studying the Black maternal mortality crisis. He’s itching for the opportunity to disappear Black organizers or declare martial law to incite violence and round up African Americans.

Black people know the laws of this country, including the First Amendment, still don’t apply to all its citizens.

There’s another “Hands Off” day of protests planned for April 19. But don’t expect to see many of your Black neighbors there.

Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.

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