A note before you read: If you are a white reader who is not ready for this fight, reading on will likely make you feel attacked, defensive and you may dismiss this as “angry” or “divisive.”

That discomfort is not accidental — it is the necessary friction between your current understanding and the reality you need to face. 

I’ve witnessed so many things in the past few weeks that have left me speechless. My first reflex is to say, “I told you,” “We told you,” “Everyone who wasn’t white said this could and would happen.” But as a survivor of serial violent acts by the state, by the system, by friends, by family, I’ve learned to observe first.

What I’m observing is remarkable: White people responding to a direct attack on the very state they have killed to preserve with confusion, paralysis and misdirection. You have identified so completely with the state that now, with that protection revoked, you’re left with nothing but your rugged “individualism” and demands for “Our right to comfort.”

Even now, your racism remains louder than your need to survive.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the government (The Ministry of Plenty) announces “a generous increase” in chocolate rations. The rations have been raised to 20 grams. The population is expected to celebrate. What they’ve been conditioned to forget is that the ration was 30 grams the week before. This isn’t just a cut, it’s a cut they’re expected to be grateful for.

Orwell understood a crucial mechanism of authoritarian control: the faster you can get the public to forget the prior condition, the faster and more disorienting the manipulation becomes. Propaganda becomes facts.  It’s not enough that people accept the reduction. They must feel grateful for it. The government is seen as gracious, even benevolent. 

This has been the lived reality for nonwhite people in America since its founding. We have watched our rights, our resources, our very existence treated as a chocolate ration; initially denied, given reduced, repackaged, presented back to us as generosity. We have been told to be grateful for scraps while watching the full ration distributed to white communities.

And white people, tied to the logic of white supremacy, observed this and justified it. It was widely considered that we deserved less. You believed the state’s gaslighting applied to us but not to you. You convinced yourselves that the difference was race, merit, culture. Anything except what it actually was: class. Can you see the irony in white folx buying into that narrative, for others? 

The entire time, the only difference to the state has been whether you are in or you are out of the money hoarding club. We all know that circle gets smaller and smaller every day.

Now the same mechanism is being turned on you, and you are shocked. You cannot believe the state would do this to you. The chocolate ration has been cut for you now. And you’re being told to celebrate.

Witnessing a white woman, a mother, a neighbor, a citizen standing up for others’ rights, murdered by federally sanctioned officers, is horrific. Full stop.

The reality is harsh. It is also normalized for all other racial identities in our society.

Those of us who are nonwhite recognized immediately the difference in this shocking instance. The ease with which they murdered a white woman and the ease with which they gaslit and dismissed it. That is different. This is not the canary in the coal mine signaling danger. This is all of us standing in the mine, staring at the dead canary, while the people who sent it refuse to believe the bird could die.

There are ways to fight fascist regimes. Leaders have fought for liberation in lands that claimed freedom for all. Leaders today have been begging for solidarity, insisting that equity must be the priority. That call was never one-sided. It was an attempt to prevent us from arriving exactly where we are now.

The answer requires you to examine your relationship to the myth of supremacy in your legacy. There is no supremacy in your legacy. That was the lie that kept you compliant while the state built the apparatus now being used against you. We know. From experience. This is not propaganda; this doesn’t pass, you are locked out. 

Every community that is nonwhite, gender-inclusive and socioeconomically diverse has already given you the blueprint. We have built thriving communities against the odds and the odds have always been racism, the state, the institution, willful ignorance, misogyny. They are the very forces now threatening your liberties. These are the anchors dragging down any possibility of effective resistance. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. You need to follow the people who already know the road.

There is no time left to debate the legitimacy of movements led by people who have been marginalized. Our success in building power despite systemic opposition is already proven. The belief that there’s “only one right way” (and that it must come from people who look like you) at this point is staggering. Break free from the indoctrination. Release “either/or thinking.” Let go of the myth that there’s “only one right way.”

Pick up Angela Davis. Read Malcolm X. Study Nikki Giovanni. Learn from Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, the Combahee River Collective, the countless theorists and organizers who have been doing this work while it was willingly dismissed as “not for you.”

The strategies exist. The roadmaps exist. The solidarity you need exists. We are running out of time. The chocolate ration is being cut again tomorrow. The canary is dead. The mine is filled with poison.

We already know the way out. Will you remember humanity and the truth in our history, or will you insist on finding your own path until it’s too late?

Ayisha Elliott, Black Girl From Eugene, is a relational leadership coach assisting in centering introspective alignment to intention and impact who will work with any organizations. You can find and support her work at Patreon.com/Blackgirlfromeugene_1 or follow on Substack @blackgirlfromeugene.