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systemic racism
Birthright Citizenship Is a Promise We Cannot Break
Defending birthright citizenship is not only about protecting children of immigrants. It is about preserving a constitutional framework that recognizes our shared humanity and limits the government’s ability to decide whose rights matter.
Mar 31, 2026
For more than 150 years, the 14th Amendment has been an uncompromising line: If you are born on US soil, you are a citizen. That principle is so foundational, many of us take it for granted.
But that principle is under attack.
On April 1, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments challenging President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. At the center of the case is an executive order issued on the first day of Trump’s second term to end Birthright Citizenship for children of undocumented parents.
The justices will now decide whether a president can rewrite one of the clearest promises embedded in American law.
If the court strikes down birthright citizenship, it would let the government decide who counts as American based on the circumstances of their birth.
On the surface, threatening the rights of children born in the United States might seem like an immigration debate. But history tells a different story.
Birthright citizenship was never an abstract ideal. It was a response to America’s long history of dehumanization—a past that Trump and his MAGA allies are now openly trying to resurrect. The 14th Amendment was designed to dismantle a system that denied Black people a political voice, treated us as property, and denied our humanity.
Ratified in 1868, the amendment overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford, which declared that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Birthright citizenship was meant to be simple and permanent so no government could take it away based on race, ancestry, or political whim.
For formerly enslaved people and their descendants, it guaranteed recognition as full citizens in their own country. But the 14th Amendment did more than correct the injustices of slavery: It expanded who counts as American.
The Constitution says plainly that anyone born in the United States and subject to its laws is a citizen. That principle was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which ruled that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents was a citizen, establishing that US-born children of immigrants are citizens. This was despite the fact that Chinese immigrants at the time were barred from naturalization under the Chinese Exclusion laws.
The case now before the court seeks to undo that understanding.
If the court strikes down birthright citizenship, it would let the government decide who counts as American based on the circumstances of their birth.
The 14th Amendment’s authors understood the danger of that approach. Once citizenship becomes conditional, every other right soon follows.
Ending birthright citizenship would affect everyone—not just children of immigrants—in a system that has long questioned the belonging of people of color, including Black Americans.
Who must prove their citizenship? Who is presumed to have it? Who gets stopped, questioned, or detained? Who lives under suspicion?
History answers clearly: Marginalized communities pay the price first.
I write this as someone who has spent more than 15 years organizing for racial justice and as a Black man whose citizenship was once explicitly denied by law. Today, I see how systemic racism—from policing to voter suppression—continues to shape the livelihoods of Black Americans.
And that danger does not stop with birthright citizenship: These attacks threaten the entire 14th Amendment, including the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses that underpin victories against segregation, discrimination, voter suppression, and unchecked government power.
If the government can redefine citizenship, unequal treatment under the law becomes easier to justify. Civil rights become conditional. Equal protection becomes negotiable. State power expands while accountability shrinks.
We have seen this playbook before. After Reconstruction came Jim Crow. During industrialization came the Chinese Exclusion Act. Black workers were excluded from key New Deal protections. The gains of the civil rights movement were followed by voter suppression and mass incarceration.
Each time progress threatened entrenched power, the response was restriction rather than inclusion.
The 14th Amendment was written to break that cycle.
Defending birthright citizenship is not only about protecting children of immigrants. It is about preserving a constitutional framework that recognizes our shared humanity and limits the government’s ability to decide whose rights matter.
So the stakes could not be clearer during these Supreme Court arguments.
Birthright citizenship is more than law. It is the promise that America’s diversity, struggle, and resilience matter. It is the legacy of those who fought to be recognized as fully human—and the foundation of a democracy that must belong to all of us.
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‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Says Teachers Should Be ‘Imprisoned’ for Accurate Lessons on US History
The world’s richest man believes it is “treason” to teach students the plain fact that the United States was built on stolen Native American land.
Jan 15, 2026
Self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk believes schoolteachers should be "imprisoned" for educating students on topics that portray America negatively—including the nation's history of racism and the displacement of Native Americans.
The world's richest man, who was a prolific donor to President Donald Trump and a member of his administration, expressed this desire in a post on his social media app X on Thursday in response to a survey of high school students from 2022 conducted by the right-wing Manhattan Institute, about whether they had been taught concepts labeled as part of "critical social justice."
The post Musk replied to specifically emphasized that, according to the poll, 45% of students said they had been taught that "America was built on stolen land," while another 22% said they'd heard it from an adult at school.
Any even cursory retelling of US history makes such a statement beyond dispute. Since the arrival of European settlers in what would become the United States, Native Americans have been subject to over 300 years of well-documented forced migration policies, wars of extermination, and coercive treaties codifying their dispossession from lands they lived on for centuries.
In 2021, a year before the survey was conducted, researchers examined the first comprehensive dataset quantifying the forced removal of Native Americans and found that Indigenous people had lost approximately 99% of the lands they historically occupied.
The poll showed that students had also been taught other ideas about America that, while politically contentious, are also well-founded by US history and ongoing realities of legal and economic inequality—including that "America is a systemically racist country," that "white people have white privilege," and that "America is a patriarchal society."
With state-level bans on what it calls "critical race theory," "gender ideology," and other supposedly "divisive concepts" in public education, the right has in recent years been systematically chipping away at classroom discussions related to the uglier parts of US history and resulting ongoing inequality. Meanwhile, the second Trump administration has sought to use federal funds to coerce public schools into adopting his standards for "patriotic education."
But Musk, who donated an unprecedented $290 million to Trump to help him reclaim the presidency in 2024, thinks merely banning students from learning negative things about the country is not enough.
"Teaching people to hate America fundamentally destroys patriotism and the desire to defend our country," he wrote. "Such teachings should be viewed as treason and those who do it imprisoned."
The irony was immediately apparent to many. Musk's call comes just days after he claimed that by pushing to ban his platform X over its proliferation of nonconsensual artificially generated pornography, including of children, the United Kingdom “want[s] to suppress free speech.”
Musk has on numerous previous occasions emphasized the importance of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free expression.
"You can't claim to care about the First Amendment if you believe this," responded Billy Binion, a reporter for the libertarian news outlet Reason." Treason is a capital offense. Imprisoning or executing people for their words is impossible to reconcile with any understanding of free speech. Incoherent and un-American."
The billionaire has long claimed to be one of free speech's foremost defenders, but often only in cases involving his ideological allies.
Since he took over the social media platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, those who have criticized him, reported negative news stories about him, or promoted causes he disagrees with—particularly Palestinian or LGBTQ+ rights—have often had their accounts suspended or their content’s reach limited.
In recent weeks, echoing rhetoric from the Trump administration about deporting tens of millions of nonwhite American citizens, Musk has spiraled further into explicit calls for the ethnic cleansing of the United States, endorsing posts stating that white people must “reclaim our nations” or “be conquered, enslaved, raped, and genocided” and that “if white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered,” necessitating “white solidarity.”
"Obviously, the whole Elon-is-a-free-speech-absolutist thing is long dead," wrote Alex Griswold, a spokesperson for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, commonly known as FIRE. "But it goes beyond that to the point that he is significantly more censorial than the median American."
Pam Fessler, a former news correspondent for NPR wrote that "People who call for the imprisonment of those who teach facts are the ones who 'hate' America."
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Social Justice and Eclipse: Predicting and Preparing For Change
It is best to approach social justice the same way the world prepares for an eclipse—with foresight, community, and coordination.
Apr 23, 2025
Millions of people across the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico recently witnessed a total solar eclipse—a rare and breathtaking alignment of the Earth, moon, and sun. Scientists had predicted its precise timing and path years in advance, with detailed maps showing where the event would be most visible.
Across the U.S., communities prepared—gathering in fields, schools, and rooftops with protective glasses and cameras in hand. They trusted science. They trusted preparation. They showed up.
In the same week one year later, over 600,000 people across all 50 states signed up to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump and his ongoing threat to democracy for the Hands Off Protests in 1,300 locations. These protests were not spontaneous—they were planned, anticipated, and powerfully aligned. Total estimates for the day’s peaceful protests are 3 million people.
It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.
If it is possible to chart the movement of celestial bodies with such precision, then it is also possible to chart the social conditions that produce change. Responses to the conditions that cause criminality, injustice, or violence can also be charted and faced.
A crime can unfold in seconds, but its consequences—especially in marginalized communities—can last a lifetime. The root conditions that set the stage—poverty, childhood trauma, environmental injustice, disinvestment in education, and systemic racism—are all in place and can be addressed.
Knowing the precursors of injustice, it is prudent not to sit still and wait for tragedy before taking action. It is best to approach social justice the same way the world prepares for an eclipse—with foresight, community, and coordination.
Research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) confirms that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—like neglect, abuse, or household dysfunction—can have long-term impacts on health, behavior, and justice involvement. Communities with higher poverty rates have higher crime rates, not because of moral failure, but due to decades of disinvestment and inequality.
As someone who has spent decades working for criminal and social justice reform in communities and far beyond, I see that systems and practices can indeed seed meaningful social change.
The Theory of Change is a framework that maps how and why desired change is expected to happen in a particular context. It’s not magic. It’s modeling. And when used correctly, it helps communities anticipate outcomes and align resources toward justice.
Like eclipse chasers who travel to be in the “path of totality,” social justice organizers prepare to be where the change is coming. They build coalitions, train communities, and develop infrastructure so that when the time is right, they do not to miss the moment to act.
At this time in history when daily political efforts are aimed at reversing timeworn, proven paths to social justice, such as defunding financial assistance to federal programs, universities, associations, and individuals based on principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is urgent to prepare and put into place ways to counter the effects.
This preparation involves policymakers, funders, nonprofits, communities, advocates, individuals, families, institutions, and faith-based organizations to work toward the goal of social change of equity, fairness, access, and justice.
You cannot stare directly at an eclipse without special tools. Similarly, you often can’t see the slow build of a movement until it’s in full swing. Yet humans can sense change—like animals do before an eclipse, like trees that darken and cool in response to a shadow overhead.
Similarly, social change is intangible yet deeply felt. It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.
Preparation now is crucial. Facing funding cuts nationally to vital services, rollbacks of civil rights protections, and an increasing normalization of political violence, it is urgent to create needed structures that assess possibilities in order to anticipate and respond proactively.
Throughout history, research shows that Black women have sensed these shifts and led people and communities through them—not just during well-known moments—but in everyday resistance throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
For example, Rosa Parks didn’t just refuse to give up her seat one time; she was a seasoned organizer and a supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or the SNCC Legacy Project. Shirley Chisholm wasn’t just the first Black woman to run for president—she helped reframe what political leadership looks like.
Barbara Jordan called out President Richard Nixon with such clarity it redefined accountability in American politics. Tennis icon Serena Williams crip-walked across a tennis court and reclaimed joy on a global stage. First Lady Michelle Obama wore sleeveless dresses and shattered expectations of what dignity and leadership looked like in a Black woman’s body.
A 2021 Texas A&M University study reports, “Black women, through their inclusive, community-based activist endeavors, continue to carve out fugitive spaces and counterpublics where counternarratives are actively generated to fight for a more equitable and inclusive democracy that serves all.”
As a Black woman, I see that Black women are the eclipse, the unexpected alignment. They have known through history how to bring light through the dark.
Social change can happen in quiet corners—in small towns, church basements, classrooms, or in the act of mentoring one young person. It doesn’t have to be a massive protest or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It can be both.
But when those moments do arrive—like the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ+ rights movement—they are rarely surprises. They are the result of decades of work, layered with setbacks and strategy.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But that arc doesn’t bend on its own. It requires intention and action.
It is time not just to watch the changes happening, but to prepare and to make change, witnessing the outcomes together.
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