As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, Black Americans are largely sitting out the celebrations. A viral illustration from early 2025 captures the mood: four Black women sit atop a building, coffee cups in hand, watching the world burn at a distance, with an American flag hanging over the edge. On platforms like TikTok and Threads, Black users have urged one another to “not give them a reaction,” referring to white people who find Black rage exciting and lucrative.
A Whisper Instead of a Roar
The 250th anniversary arrives among Black communities as a whisper instead of a roar. “We know freedom is different for us,” said Morgan Jerkins, a senior writer at the Guardian US. Even before the colonists rebelled against the British crown, Black enslaved South Carolinians shouted “Liberty!” and carried banners as they marched down a road near the Stono River in St Paul’s parish during the Stono Revolt of 1739, the largest slave rebellion in the British mainland colonies before the American Revolution.
That same language for “liberty” would be echoed in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson drafted a 168-word passage condemning slavery, but it never made it to the final version. Slavery was big business for both the north and south. The Mansfield Judgment of 1772, which declared that a master could not force deportation of an enslaved person in England, solidified colonists’ opposition to the British crown. Historian Gerald Horne argues that the American Revolution itself was to preserve slavery.
Historical Erasure and Resistance
Many Americans know about the Declaration of Independence but not about the Stono Revolt of 1739. Its story was passed through oral tradition, and high school textbooks previously excluded such rebellions, similar to the Trump administration’s erasure attempts of Black history. The rebels communicated through music and dance; white colonists banned “drums, horns and other loud instruments” to impede coordination, but such sound technology persisted in the rebels’ descendants.
Rallying cries can be heard through the songs of Mahalia Jackson and Nina Simone, the ring shout and Negro spirituals, the orations of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Fannie Lou Hamer, and the slogans of the Black Panther Party and the SNCC. All these iterations reinforce solidarity, strength, and resistance to white tyranny.
Digital Age Tactics
In the digital age, Black Americans are still communicating, but instead of shouting “Liberty!”, they are saying nothing at all. The tactic is to remain grounded and deprive provocation of attention. “Our energy is powerful,” said Juju Bae, a Brooklyn-based spiritual practitioner and priestess. “Animism – everything has a spirit, everything has an energy to it. These things that are meant to stir us, that is matter. You know, that is a force.”
Leading publications have wondered about Black absences at anti-Trump protests and the beginning of a four-year break to see how much rest can shift culture. The upset when Black rage is like catnip to white nationalists is evident: pardoned January 6 rioter Jake Lang held up signs such as “Black parents are failures” at the 2026 BET awards; a MAGA debate group set up an unauthorized table at Tennessee State University; Michelle Obama is once again masculinized by the right.
An Anti-DEI World
Black Americans now live in an anti-DEI world where many have abandoned them despite their labor being the backbone of the nation. The fight from here on out looks much different because Black people will not carry water for anyone else anymore. Instead, they will drink it themselves.
