I spent a few days in our nation’s capital at the end of last week for the March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote. More about that next week. The trip threw off my writing schedule a bit, so I decided this week I’d share with you my first podcast appearance, which was also last week, on “Real Talk with DeDe.” DeDe is based in Nigeria, and her show centers on “meaningful discussions about life, healing, spirituality, health, finance, relationships, and personal growth.”

DeDe and I talked about my work on the Healing White History project, including my conversations with my ancestors and how they changed me.

You can listen to the episode here: The Past We Inherit, The Future We Choose.

I’ve lightly edited the transcript below to take out some of my repetition and “you knows.” I’ll work on those verbal tics and more – plenty of my flaws are still reflected in the transcript. I hope you enjoy our conversation, imperfections and all.

The Past We Inherit, The Future We Choose

DeDe:

Today I’m excited to have Steve Jensen with me. Steve spent 23 years as a plaintiff’s trial lawyer, but today we are talking about something much more personal. Family, history, identity, and what happens when you discover something about your own past that completely changed the way you see it. Steve discovered that an ancestor he has admired was involved in slavery and pro-slavery organization during the Civil War era. Instead of looking away, he decided to confront that history head on.

He even took the unusual approach of saying he deposed his ancestor, using the skill of a trial lawyer to have an emerging conversation with a man who has been dead for more than a century. Steve, welcome to Real Talk with DeDe. It’s so good to have you here.

Steve: Oh, I’m really excited to be here, DeDe. Thank you so much for having me.

DeDe: So before we get into your family history, I want people to get to know you first. You spent 23 years as a plaintiffs’ trial lawyer. So what drew you into that career?

Steve: I practiced in an area of law that we call toxic tort, which just means I represented individuals who had been affected by exposures to toxic substances. Most of the clients that I represented over those 23 years were people who had illnesses. Many of them had cancer. And I sued chemical companies for the most part. And I did that because I have always been concerned about the environment. And I also consider myself a storyteller. I love stories. I love connecting with people through storytelling, either listening to stories or helping create stories. And that’s what the job of a plaintiffs’ lawyer is.

DeDe: And when you spend that much of your life asking difficult questions and looking for evidence, I imagine that those skills probably come in handy later in a very unexpected way.

Did being a trial lawyer influence the way you approach your own family history?

Steve: Yes. So, when it came to imagining conversations with ancestors who had been involved in building the false story of race and the false story of white superiority, white supremacy, I definitely used my trial lawyer skills in those imagined conversations to confront those ancestors, my own ancestors, about whether or not their interactions, their behaviors with respect to race were consistent with their own ethical and moral beliefs, their spirituality. And that was a lot like cross-examining a witness.

DeDe: That actually brings me to Charley. You had this photograph on your wall and I believe you knew the man you were honoring. So what happened that made you realize there was another side of history?

Steve: Yes, I was reading some of the documents about our family that were left to me by my grandmother, who had died a few years before. And she had left this treasure trove of documents, photos, and correspondence that went back generations in our family. She had put together scrapbooks for both her children and her grandchildren. And I was going through these scrapbooks and I came across a biography of this man, Charles Arden Russell, who was my third great-grandfather who lived in the 19th century and during the Civil War era.

And I had known that he was a lawyer like I was a lawyer, and he was a judge, and he was a pioneer. I had been taught all of that. So I had known a little bit about him before, but I came across a biography of him, a short biography written by his son, which revealed to me that he had not only owned slaves, But he had traded in enslaved people, bought and sold other folks. And that was very shocking to me. And that was what led me to decide to look into how I need to tell the whole truth about my family.

DeDe: Once you had uncovered all this information, you could have simply just written about it and just leave it there, but you choose to do something very different. You say you deposed your ancestors. What would your work actually look like?

Steve: Yes, it was a little like a deposition or like a cross-examination in a trial. But it was not just that. I imagined conversations with these ancestors, including Charley. And these imagined conversations, I imagined going back in time to their time and going to their homes and being welcomed by them. They knew who I was and where I was from when I got there. And they welcomed me as family. And we had small talk. We had conversation. We caught up as family do when they’ve seen each other after a long absence or meeting family that you haven’t met before. That’s how I imagined these conversations beginning. So they weren’t like a trial or a deposition from the get-go. They were more like an encounter with family, a loving encounter.

And then I started asking them questions about their interaction with People of Color during their time, during their lives. And that started getting to where we were getting more into the area of where it looked like what I would do with a witness as a trial lawyer.

DeDe: Oh, you talked about once believing that saying everyone is the same was enough. What made you realize that that wasn’t enough?

Steve: Yeah, I undertook this project exploring what it would mean for me. And as I imagined these conversations, they were very intense. I would do a lot of research beforehand. Before I wrote those imagined conversations, I would do as much research as I could about the person, about not just the individual family member, but also the world in which they lived. So what was the culture like in Texas where Charley lived in the 1850s, in the 1860s, in the 1870s? What was that culture like? How did that culture treat the issue of race? And what stories would Charley have learned? What would he have inherited? And how would that have affected his mindset? And then I stepped into those conversations and started writing them.

And, of course, they were happening in my own imagination. But even though that happened, they were transformative for me personally. I didn’t know how they were going to come out. And at the end of it, at the end of it, DeDe, I experienced more in a much more visceral way than I ever had before. A very personal connection to racism and to how my family had been connected to that. And that motivated me to work much harder on repairing the racist systems that still exist in our country on economics, on justice, on health, on education, on every area of life. Here in the United States, we continue to have systems that harm People of Color and benefit people who look like me. And I believe it’s our responsibility as white folks to help repair those systems and make them equitable.

DeDe: Yeah. And I know this become even more personal because this isn’t just history sitting in a book for you. Your son married a black woman and you now have three black grandchildren.

So how does that change the way you think about everything you’ve uncovered?

Steve: Yes. I mean, a good friend of mine who I have worked with on racial equity issues for years is a Black man. When I told him that my son had married a Black woman and he said, “Good! Now you have skin in the game.” And it does. It changes, particularly when I have three black grandchildren now, as you mentioned, they will be throughout their lives impacted by these unfair, inequitable systems that my own ancestors helped to build. And being able to imagine these conversations where I got to know these ancestors and what felt like a very real sense made it just more visceral for me. It made me feel this responsibility to help work toward change in my gut. And I had not felt that before. But also, as you say, having family members who are Black, also was a huge contribution to that.

DeDe: What do your relatives think about the work that you’re doing?

Steve: Some of them are very supportive and want to work together with me to help heal our family history, and work toward racial repair and racial reparations for what our family’s role has been. And so a small group of one of my brothers and some of my cousins have been meeting together to discuss how we heal and what we can do.

So some of them have been very supportive. On the other hand, I reached out to my whole family and I asked them to read the book manuscript I had written that included these ancestral conversations and included the discussion of my feelings about how we have a responsibility to repair. And some of my family didn’t respond at all. But every response I got was supportive in the sense that they thought the work I did was very creative and thoughtful. But, many of them were not interested in pursuing racial justice and think that it’s a little wild-eyed. But they loved me anyway. So some of them are supportive of the work and some of them are not, but they’re all supportive of me in a general sense.

DeDe: Now I want to ask you something that I imagine that you’ve most probably heard before. So people might hear a white man writes a book about his own racial reckoning and immediately roll their eyes.

So what would you say to someone who feels that way?

Steve: If People of Color are the ones rolling their eyes, then I get it, because historically white folks who have presented themselves or thought of themselves as allies with People of Color on racial justice in the United States in particular have let those folks down. They have burned out because the work is hard and there’s pressure from family or friends or your society or community at large to not do that work because it’s seen as being some kind of a traitor to your own race. And so people have burned out and they’ve stopped. And, of course, People of Color don’t have that choice, right? They have to fight that fight to survive for not only their own lives, but for generation after generation. And so if you’re a Person of Color and you’re rolling your eyes at me, I get it because historically that work has not lasted long enough or not been true enough or authentic enough and has not actually helped change the systems that we have been talking about. And I get that. And I have to just accept that that’s the history that white folks have had and just try to see if I can work to get beyond what that history has shown and do something different. And that’s my hope and that’s my intention is to make it part of my own lifestyle, not just something I’m doing for a little while. I intend to do this work for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, if you’re a white person who’s rolling their eyes at me, that’s a little different. That suggests that you think there is no race problem or that racism is just a bunch of crap or you believe that it’s not the right thing to do, even though the facts are what we’ve been talking about here – which is that there continue to be ongoing effects systemically in this country that harm People of Color and benefit white folks that cut across all different aspects of our society. So I accept their eye rolling and try to continue to put out the truth and hope that the healing work will eventually lead to healing everybody, including the folks that have been rolling their eyes.

DeDe: Do you think it’s important for people to examine their own family history rather than only learning about history in a general sense?

And why do you think that?

Steve: Yes. Well, I can say that for me, as I’ve told you, it was transformational to do this work, to imagine what my ancestors were really like as people and to actually encounter them as individual human beings. I found that changed my own attitudes about myself and what my role was and what my responsibility was in a way that was much stronger. I’d been involved in racial equity work for years. So I’d been doing the work, but still, doing this family history work for me really was a game changer in terms of my energy, my attitudes, and my sense of responsibility to really take this to the next level. And to convince other people that I’m sure I’m not alone. It’s not going to connect for everyone – and I’m not claiming that this is the right path for every person, but I would encourage every white person to at least explore their own family history and the connection with race that that family has had.

DeDe: You’ve had access to family scrapbooks, letters, records, and all of this documentation. But someone listening might be thinking, I don’t have any of that. I don’t have a scrapbook. I don’t even know where to begin. Where should that person start?

Steve: Yes, thank you for asking that. I recommend that the first thing that white folks do if they’re going to start this process is take some time to learn about the history of race in the United States. And that history goes back a little more than 400 years now. And race is really, as it has developed over the last 400 years, an American creation. It was a story created by the white colonists in the colonies at the time to help protect their wealth and their power. And so that story has developed over time. And of course, it’s spread throughout the world so that now we have racism in every corner of the world. But that story of race really was developed here. And I think that it’s important for someone who’s exploring this work to start by learning that history, learn about the history of race. And there’s different ways to do that. There’s books that you can read. There’s articles that you can read. Or if you’re not a reader, you can watch documentary films that do much the same thing. And I recommend some of those to people who are starting the work. So that’s where I tell people to start, because it gives you a framework for understanding who your family was in connection with the issue of race. Because until you understand what the culture of race and the story of race was, you can’t really understand how your family fits in. And then once you’ve learned that broad history of the story of race, you can start digging in and say, OK, when did this particular family member live? Where were they and what was the story of race in that place in that time? And how would that have affected their daily life? And try to gather as much information as you can through genealogy websites, for example, Ancestry.com.

You need to gather as much information as you can about the person. But the thing that you really need to do to understand the person’s connection with the story of race is understand that story more broadly first. And so that’s the step.

DeDe: And let’s say, what if they actually discover something uncomfortable and something that changes the way they see their family? What if? What would you say to them?

Steve: Yes, I would say to not run away from that uncomfortable feeling. That uncomfortable feeling is natural. The sadness, the anger, the just not knowing what that means for me and for my family today, all of that is natural.

But what our culture has taught us white folks to do in America, our culture has taught us to run away from that and to ignore it, to be blind to it, to write it out of our own family histories. And I think the only way that we can heal is to confront it. And I tried to confront it in a very direct way by actually going back and talking to those ancestors.

DeDe: You’ve been doing this for eight years now. So what has surprised you the most? And after everything that you’ve uncovered, has anything about yourself surprised you?

Steve: Yes. Well, I didn’t expect when I started writing that the writing would change me as dramatically as it did. I didn’t realize that I would feel compelled after confronting my own ancestors to go out and tell other white folks, you should be doing this too. I didn’t expect to start a project where I was trying to convince other white people to do this work. But that’s where I have found myself. And it’s because of that strong emotional transformation that I think we need. We need that from white people as a society because it is white work to fix this problem.

DeDe: True. You said something really interesting that guilt isn’t the point because guilt can actually paralyze people. So if guilt isn’t the answer, what does responsibility look like?

Steve: I think that guilt both paralyzes and it also gives people excuses. And what I mean by that is the United States, our culture is very individualistic. And we often say if someone in our family in the past or even our current family did something wrong, that’s not our fault. And if it isn’t our fault, what does it have to do with me? And that’s just part of American culture. And so I think that we need to take a broader collectivist kind of approach to examining history of the United States, broadly speaking, and our own family histories and say, look, what part did our own families – and white people in general – have in building the terrible inequities that we have today?

Why do those inequities exist? Well, we personally didn’t build them. They were built decades or centuries ago, but those systems continue to create harm today and they continue to create benefits for white people today. And as the recipients of that unfair benefit, it’s our responsibility. We also inherit these stories of our ancestors. So if our ancestors played a part, as most white folks’ ancestors did, in helping build these cultural systems – we owe responsibility as people who inherited those false stories of race and white superiority, we owe a debt to help make it right.

DeDe: Yeah. Steve, do you think that people can acknowledge the harm in their history without feeling personally responsible for something they didn’t do?

Steve: Yes. I mean, like I say, I differentiate between guilt and responsibility in that sense. Guilt says,“I did something.” And you didn’t do it. Obviously there are still some white people who are continuing to help build racist and inequitable problems. And some of them are explicitly racist today in America. That still exists, but most white people aren’t in that place. And most white people can honestly say, those decisions, those choices that my ancestors may have made, that other white people made decades or centuries ago, those choices weren’t something that I did, so I don’t think that I need to be involved in that. And even white people who are sympathetic to the issue of race and may even consider themselves allies – and this was true for me for most of my life – don’t think of race as being my problem. I didn’t think it was my problem to work on. I thought it was something for People of Color to fix. And that’s not right. Even though I didn’t make those racist choices, because I inherited my ancestor’s stories and I inherited these systems that benefit me, I do have a responsibility. So that’s how I differentiate guilt and responsibility.

DeDe: My final question is, underneath all the history and research, there’s also a very personal story here about identity and becoming a different person. So how has this entire journey changed you?

Steve: Yeah, it’s been transformative for me in that I believe I am called. I feel it’s a spiritual calling to help repair the problems of race and to convince other white people to join in this work that is white work. Now I get it. Race is my problem. And the journey has been very inspiring and difficult, but also incredibly powerful in a positive way – a transformative experience for me. And I want other people, other white folks to jump on that ride with me.

DeDe: And after everything you’ve learned, questioned and confronted, what do you hope people take away from your story?

Steve: I hope they take away that this can be positively transformational work. And even though it’s difficult, it’s intense, it’s uncomfortable, that it can still lead to joyful connection. It can lead to transformation of systems in a way that benefits all of us, and creates joy, connection, and transformation that we can all benefit from.

DeDe: Yes. Steve, this has been such an interesting and honest conversation. Before we wrap up, where can people find you and learn more about your work?

Steve: Yes, I would hope that people join, subscribe to my Substack, which is called Healing White History. You can get there by going to healingwhitehistory.substack.com or just opening up Substack and searching for Healing White History. And I also have a website, a separate author website called stevebjensen.com. So you can find me at both places.

____

As I said in the interview, I hope that all of you white folks will give this work a try yourselves. I lay out a seven-step process for doing that in Framework for Healing Your Own White History. And I have a standing invitation to anyone who’s trying this to ask me questions in writing. Or we can meet via Zoom to discuss how to overcome any obstacles, and to help process the journey.

Content note: Repeated period references to Native Americans as “heathens,” “savages,” and “Indians.”

We start today in a place and time we have been before: Hadley, Massachusetts in February 1677. We are in the home of my ninth-great granduncle, Rev. John Russell, Jr. (1626-1692). “Young John” is one of the founders of Hadley, and the town’s Congregationalist minister. Also in the room is his father, John Russell “The Emigrant,” (1597-1680).

As I arrive, the Massachusetts colonists are fighting “King Philip’s War” against the Wampanoag people – the same folks with whom the Mayflower settlers celebrated the first “Thanksgiving” feast 56 years earlier, in 1621.

We join the conversation in mid-flow, after my ancestors received me warmly and then told me what they knew about the story of the “First Thanksgiving.”1 The conversation has now turned to the current war with the natives.2

Hadley, February 1677

“Why do you believe it’s God’s will for you to kill these people who were here before you, living peacefully on these lands for thousands of years?”

“Scripture,” Young John answers.

“Which scriptures specifically?”

Young John smiles. I’ve tossed one into his wheelhouse. “Are you familiar, Steven, with the covenant God struck with Abraham, set out in chapter 12 of Genesis?”

“Yes.”

“God promised that Abraham’s descendants would multiply, until they were like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Most importantly, God also promised that Abraham’s people would inherit the land of Canaan.”

I note the irony of the Puritans’ choice of this story to justify their wars and eventual genocide against indigenous people.3 Competing interpretations of this same Biblical story have led to thousands of years of ongoing bloodshed, with no end in sight, over who should possess the true “Canaan” – in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon. God’s covenant with Abraham has proven to be a story with incredible power, but not in a good way.

I decide to spar with Young John, at least for a while. “But this is not the land of Canaan, as you know. That land lies thousands of miles to the east of England, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.”

As I could have predicted, my parry does not exactly slow Young John down. “But surely you see the pattern, son? This land IS the new Canaan. The Christians in New England are God’s chosen elect, subject to the tyrannies of King Charles, no less than Moses’s people were subject to the tyranny of Pharaoh. We are the new tribe of Israel. We left our version of Egypt to travel to this wilderness we call New England, where we found these heathen tribes living in our promised land. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 12 calls out those who are without Christ as being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise. The Indians here are aliens to the covenant and commonwealth of Israel.”

Young John pauses briefly to puff his pipe. But only briefly. I sigh, regretting my scriptural question. Young John continues. “In Deuteronomy chapter 7, God tells the Israelites who approach Canaan that ‘When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it … thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them.’ This is God’s command of us in New England. We shall follow His will and smite his enemies, who are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.”

I try a new tack. “If you are truly the new tribe of Israel, and this land is truly the New Canaan, then why did the Plymouth settlers befriend the Wampanoag in the first place? Why did you feel called to convert them to Christianity? If they were the Canaanites, God’s command would have been the same then as you say it is now – destroy them, right?”

Young John looks sad. “You are correct, Steven. We should never have befriended the savages. We misunderstood God’s will. We repent of that poor judgment. But God’s plan is now clear.”

“As I recall, just a few minutes ago the two of you told me that it was clearly God’s will that the Plymouth settlers allied with Massasoit’s people, because otherwise those settlers might have starved in the winter of 1621.”

Young John’s jaw clenches and his brow furrows. But he breathes through it. “Steven, your challenges are worthy of thought and discussion. But perhaps we can first break our fast together, as family?”

Young John’s response to my anger tips me off balance. But … a quick body check reveals I’m really hungry.

“I’d love to join you for a meal.”

The tension releases. Until after we finish the meal.

I turn back to the Johns. “Gentlemen, please tell me why the Christians’ beliefs about the Indians in New England have changed so much since 1621.”

“Hmm. One moment, son.” Young John turns back to the hearth, where the two pipes had been laid back on the mantle. He grabs both, refuels, hands one to his father, then lights both pipes with another ember.

Then he turns to me. “Steven, have you ever had a stranger come into your community, or your home, with violent intent?”

“I have not. I have imagined it. It must be terrifying.”

Young John nods. “It is that. It is terrifying, horrible, and also highly motivational. I believe it is one means by which God creates transformation.”

I pause, thinking more about Wampanoag raids and the impact of that type of trauma on the settlers’ attitudes toward the indigenous people. Trauma itself is a broken story, replaying in our heads without our permission.

I decide to take a chance. Maybe I can help stop that broken story from playing over and over again in the heads of my ancestors.

“I want to go back to your changing views about the Indians. Just to clarify, you understood God’s will as to the Indians differently after King Philip’s War began?”

Both men nod. “How could we not?” Young John asks.

“You tell me you now understand that God views these natives as Canaanites – aliens to God’s covenant. So you believe God commands you to destroy them. I want you to indulge me for a moment. Please. What if that is not correct? You say the Christians in New England misunderstood God’s will about the Indians fifty years ago, so isn’t it possible you are still misunderstanding God’s will now? What if I told you that the ancestors of the Wampanoag had lived on this land for thousands of years before God ever made His promise to Abraham, and that promise was about a land that is thousands of miles away on the Mediterranean Sea? Can you concede the possibility that God’s promise to Abraham has nothing to do with God’s will toward the natives of this land, who were here long before the time of Abraham?”

The two men look at each other, then back to me. They smoke in silence.

Finally, Young John speaks. “Steven, I feel your heart in this. I do not understand why the lives of these savages are so important to you, but I know that they are. And, I freely acknowledge that I can and do make mistakes. I sin. I misunderstand God’s will, probably every day.” He pauses to puff.

“But you need to understand my heart, as I understand yours. God has spoken to me on this subject on repeated occasions. He has spoken to my community. He has spoken to all the faithful of New England. We are united in God about this. We know that God has commanded us to settle this promised land and to smite the Canaanites who stand in our way. We are not mistaken in this.”

I feel no surprise. But my lack of surprise does nothing to ease the sadness gripping my gut.

_____

Dallas 2026

Today, the Puritans’ belief that God commanded them to kill the “Indians” has been replaced by Christian nationalists’ belief that God commands them to “protect” America from immigrants.

Christian nationalism—also often referenced as white Christian nationalism—might be a misnomer because it has nothing to do with theology or any religious orthodoxy. Instead, with a basis in racialized power dynamics, it is a political framework that places America on par with the Bible’s nation of Israel, regarding the original United States as manifesting God’s intention for God’s chosen people in God’s chosen land.4

The toxic story my ninth-great granduncle preached in Hadley, Massachusetts still shows up in American minds and American policy today. PRRI polling in 2024 showed that 68% of Christian Nationalists believe in the “Great Replacement Theory” that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”5 And while most Americans look on in horror at the state-sponsored violence of terrorizing, capturing, and deporting Black and brown people, Christian nationalists cheer in support.

My ancestor relied on misinterpreting Hebrew scripture to justify the fantasy that God commanded them to destroy Native Americans and take their land. Christian nationalists today have moved past scripture to find God’s “commands” in “modern day revelations, that God actively communicates new messages—beyond those written in the canon of the Christian scriptures.”6 This idea springs from a Christian nationalist movement known as the “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR). One of the leaders of the NAR is Paula White-Cain, head of President Trump’s White House Office of Faith.7 According to White-Cain, God told her to work for Trump’s campaign, and that “saying no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”8

But current Christian nationalists have not abandoned the same misinterpretations of the same scriptures that my ancestor relied on. Just as Young John believed that Deuteronomy chapter 7 meant that God commanded the colonists to destroy Native Americans, prominent Christian nationalists claim that the same text calls for today’s Christians to “conquer” the “Seven Mountains” of government, family, economy, education, religion, arts/entertainment, media. According to Johnny Enlow’s popular book, The Seven Mountain Prophecy, these seven “mountains” map directly from the seven Canaanite nations God directs the Israelites to conquer in Deuteronomy 7.9

Christian nationalists have used this Seven Mountains mandate to advocate for exactly the types of anti-immigrant policies that our current federal administration has adopted.10

Meanwhile, at the same time Christian nationalists create new embellishments for the old false story that white Protestants are God’s chosen people in the chosen land of America, they also cherry-pick history to convince us that our country was founded on this same lie.

To be sure, Pilgrims and Puritans like my ancestor Rev. John Russell, Jr. embraced theocratic ideas in the 1600s in Massachusetts. And today’s Christian nationalists are quick to point this out. But 100 years later, the architects of the American Constitution built a new government on principles that explicitly rejected the concept that our government should be based on Christianity or any other religion. Indeed, the Bill of Rights begins with language that leaves no doubt on this subject: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”

The stories we inherit, believe, and tell make us who we are. I wrote the conversation excerpted above to change the narrative about my family’s role as colonial settlers, and to capture a fuller truth about who they were and what they did. This is the first step of the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) framework, which aims to push us toward racial healing and repair of the broken systems that continue to cause harm to People of Color today.11

When I imagined conversations with different ancestors in the course of this work, I was able to connect with all of them as family. I viscerally felt their love for me. And, unlike many real conversations involving race, in my imagination my ancestors allowed me to push them past their initial defensiveness. They dug deep, and examined whether their attitudes and behaviors toward Black and brown people were consistent with their broader moral beliefs.

Nonetheless, as the excerpt above illustrates, these conversations did not always change them. I couldn’t always change the false stories playing in their heads. And my frustration during those broken conversations echoes my feelings about many of the broken discussions we have as Americans today. Many of which are rooted in the very same false stories.

But we can’t give up just because the work is hard. As I’ve said before and will say again, we, the white allies, cannot just keep shaking our heads and patting ourselves on the back for being the “good white people.”

We need to develop a culture around the work of racial healing and repair. We need to change the narrative to reflect the whole truth, build relationships with communities of color, adopt somatic practices to heal the racial trauma embedded in all of our bodies, and find ways to transform the unjust systems that continue to cause racial harm.

And in the process we need to stop thinking about this work as heroic self-sacrifice. Not only are these transformations our responsibility, but creating a just and equitable society benefits everyone, including us. Creating belonging and community across racial lines allows all of us to become family. To rely on one another. To trust that all of us will lend a hand when it’s needed.

And we all need it now.

It’s hard not to despair. The headlines shout at us about ICE, Gaza, Iran and other literal and metaphorical wars against dignity and community. We stand in opposition. We raise our voices and our placards. We provide what comfort and resources we can to the groups being directly attacked. And still the bleak headlines keep shouting back. But, as Bryan Stevenson tells us (and I’ve told you before), “hopelessness is the enemy of justice.”1 We can’t let the darkness blind our vision. We must find hope, learn from it, join its work, and move toward justice and healing.

I see part of my role as helping you identify and oppose how our government turns racial grievance into policy, and illuminating the historical roots of such grievances, which my own ancestors can often illustrate. But I also want to highlight reasons for hope, and show paths toward healing and repair. And we should find hope not only from individuals and small communities working on racial healing and reparations, but also bigger government institutions, which we need to enlist if we’re going to heal and repair all of us, along with our broken systems.

This week we can find hope in New York City’s Commission on Racial Equity (CORE), working toward a city-wide Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation process to study the impact of slavery and its legacies in New York City, and recommend reparative policies to redress those harms. While several states and municipalities are working on either reparations or Truth and Reconciliation, New York City claims to be the first U.S. government institution to do both at the same time.2

I should stop here to note that the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) framework, developed by Dr. Gail Christopher, the former Senior Adviser and Vice President of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, like CORE in New York, aims to accomplish both the aims of narrative change and racial healing, together with transforming structures and institutions in ways that mirror racial reparations. And, as my long-time readers may recall, this Healing White History project is grounded in that TRHT framework – in the specific, individualized context of family history.3

We need to do the individual work of narrative change, healing racial trauma in our own bodies, building relationships, and undertaking repairs individually or as families, in small groups and communities. Work like the work of this project. At the same time, we also need to advocate for institutional work that has the power to repaint our social canvas with much broader strokes. Truth, racial healing, and repair should be a “both/and” proposition across individuals and institutions.4

With that in mind, let’s get back to celebrating what’s happening in New York.

New York City created CORE in 2022, granting the group independent responsibility to hold government accountable for advancing racial equity in government operations and increasing community voices in government decision making.5 In 2024, the City passed Local City Laws 91 and 92, which “offer New Yorkers ways to address the history of enslaved African labor in NYC and the killing of indigenous people, with the testimony of current and past harms suffered by communities due to racism. Implementing these bills will create a pathway to fix the system and promote racial healing.”6

As CORE Executive Director Linda Tigani put it, “ We are the only racial equity commission in the nation that is supposed to bring government to the table to be held accountable for what they are doing now, for what they have done in the past, and for anything that they may do in the future.”7

And CORE is not working alone to help heal racism in New York City. In April 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office released the 2026 Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan, a 375-page document.8 The Mayor’s Plan addresses the historical underpinnings of racism and how the city’s systems of housing, health, education, and public safety, among others, have operated inequitably for decades.

This includes a seven-page historical timeline, running from pre-1624 to 2026, outlining more than 100 historical events in the City and across the nation that illustrate the effects of race in City institutions and infrastructure. That timeline represents the type of narrative change the TRHT framework requires, by owning at least some of the truths about how governments helped create racial harm, such as NYPD killings of several Black men: Amadou Diallo (1999), Sean Bell (2006), and Eric Garner (2014).

And the Mayor’s Plan works toward the “Transformation” piece of the TRHT framework as well.

The Plan sets out short-term (1-3 years), medium-term (4-5 years), and long-term (6-10 years) equity goals and strategies for each of NYC’s 45 City agencies. These Plan strategies aim to implement structural changes across all areas of city government to correct racial disparities and inequities.

For example:

• The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) aims to reduce pregnancy-associated mortality among Black non-Hispanic women and birthing people by 10 percent by 2030. DOHMH explicitly recognizes that Black women and birthing people are at the highest risk of preventable mortality because they are “unfairly ignored and dismissed by clinicians and systems because of structural racism, disinvestment in their communities, and other outcomes.”9

• Department of Social Services (DSS) is expanding permanent housing placements for people in shelter, including growing Affordable Housing Services contracts by 1,000 units.

• The Police Department (NYPD) will quantify, track, and analyze racial disparities in stops, frisks, and searches in an effort to reduce those disparities.

Now, to clarify, fixing racial inequities in existing government systems – the work of the Mayor’s Plan – is not, of itself, reparations for past racial harm. As established by the United Nations, reparations requires restitution and compensation, together with cessation of ongoing violations (such as inequitable government systems).10 CORE continues to work on reparations while the Mayor’s Office is working on fixing racial inequities. And collectively, these efforts by CORE, the mayor’s office, and others in NYC show how government can advance racial healing and also help build new systems of social and economic infrastructure that provide more equitable opportunities and support for all people.

And that government work is by no means limited to municipalities like New York City.

CORE announced an event last week that shows that nations across the world stand together with New York City in support of truth, reconciliation, and racial reparations. Next month, on Sept. 4, CORE will host the inaugural United Nations Racial Equity Summit 2026 at the UN Headquarters in NYC. The event will be one of the “first major summits centered specifically on connecting the work of U.S. racial equity commissions with the international movement to confront racism and materially advance reparations.”11 The Summit is expected to convene a cross-section of major global leaders, U.S. racial equity commissions, government officials, faith leaders, advocates, youth and community voices.12

This is incredible work. Holy work. And don’t think that it can only happen in New York. Indeed, the Mayor’s Racial Equity Plan explicitly acknowledged that the framework the City was using was based in part on racial equity work that had already been done in Dallas, Chicago, and Philadelphia.13 A few weeks ago I told you about Land Back initiatives happening in different places across the country.14 And I’ve also mentioned that work on reparations for Black folks is going on at governments around the country – and has been in full flow in the city of Evanston, Illinois since 2021.15 Here in Dallas, staunchly conservative state lawmakers, the Governor, and the Trump Administration have rolled back much of the racial equity progress that the city of Dallas (and the rest of north Texas) made over the last 10 years.

But here’s the point: we should still remember that work happened. And it can happen again – in even bigger, better ways.

So celebrate with joy the good work that is happening, even inside of government institutions. We’ve all got to remember that joy is our strength in resistance, and despair is the tool of injustice.

Today we remember, reflect, and reckon – nine years after Unite the Right.

August 11, 2017 – Charlottesville, Virginia

In the sunlight, the young white men gather. They carry and wear powerful symbols of hate, old and new. The Confederate battle flag. The Nazi swastika. The Klan’s “Blood Drop Cross.” Thor’s hammer. An eagle carrying a fasces. And various other icons and brands adopted by neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and other white supremacy groups.

Some of the men are dressed to fight. Taped hands. Helmets. Shields. Some carry guns, clubs, pepper spray, or other weapons.

But as these men come together, they chat in small groups. They are relaxed. Smiling. Laughing. There is a sense of brotherhood – the feel of a family picnic, with a cosplay theme.1

Then darkness falls.

The white men march, torches held high. “You will not replace us! You will NOT replace us! … JEWS will NOT replace us!”

They march across the University of Virginia campus, toward St. Paul’s Memorial Episcopal church, where ministers and anti-racist activists from across the country join in an interfaith worship service. Inside, Rev. Traci Blackmon stands at the pulpit. She is a Black pastor in Florissant, Missouri, and the Executive Minister of Justice and Witness at the national United Church of Christ.2 Blackmon’s voice shakes the room:

As a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, I can still remember standing on the street, on the sidewalk, and watching the Klan rally go by. I can still remember the flags – the American flag being one of them – and the hoods, passing me by. I can STILL see it in my mind’s eye! And here I am at 54 years old – coming back because the Klan is still rising.3

As the torch-bearing marchers approach, the church goes on lockdown. But, just outside, a few anti-racist activists are surrounded. The police arrive on the scene, but watch from the sidelines.4 “White Lives Matter! White Lives Matter!” “Where are all your friends at, bitch? Where are all your friends at, bitch?” “We outnumber you.”5

Later, activist Emily Gorcenski recalled:

I got punched. I got kicked. I remember getting hit in the head. I thought it was with a torch. I stepped forward at one point and got shoved back. I thought I was going to die. … It was like a hundred people beating up a small group of [10 to 15] of us. You could feel how angry they were, but also how happy they were to be doing this. To be intimidating people like this – and this happy rage.6

The next morning, as the white men return to their crime scene, they are greeted by chanting anti-racist protestors: “No hate! No fear! White supremacists aren’t welcome here! No hate! No fear! …”

A line of men armed with shields and clubs shoves straight into the protesters. Some of them fight back, but police arrest no one. The violence escalates.7 White supremacists corner protestor DeAndre Harris in a parking garage, and beat him with poles, metal pipes, and wooden boards.

Police standing nearby do not intervene.

Most of the anti-racist protestors are non-violent. But some have come to fight.

Then, at 1:45 p.m., self-proclaimed Hitler admirer James Alex Fields slams his gray Dodge Challenger directly into a crowd of protestors, critically injuring five people, hospitalizing 20, and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who felt that she “had to go” protest after seeing footage of the torch-carrying mob the night before.8

The Aftermath

Later that day, President Trump spoke to the press about the events in Charlottesville:

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence – on many sides. On many sides. … We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation and – really, I say this so strongly – true affection for each other. … I want to salute the great work of the state and local police in Virginia. Incredible people – law enforcement. Incredible people. And also the National Guard. They’ve really been working smart and working hard. They’ve been doing a terrific job. … We must love each other, respect each other, and cherish our history and our future together.9

A few days later, Trump doubled down, asserting “you had very fine people on both sides.”10

White supremacist leaders, including former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, praised the President’s words: “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”11

Why Did It Happen?

White racial grievance led to Charlottesville. False stories about Black and brown people have spread terror across the globe. That immigrants will “replace” white folks. That “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs unfairly create advantages for minorities. That any policy measure that attempts to correct past and ongoing racial harms by recognizing racial difference is itself “racist.”

Ironically, these racial fears often bring white people together in ways that masquerade as genuine connection, as the “brotherhood” of white men in Charlottesville displayed while gathering in the sunlight nine years ago. These white siloes act like sports fans on steroids – creating what activist and writer Marika Heinrichs calls “conditional belonging.”12 But, as many of President Trump’s former supporters and employees have learned over the years, the moment that members of such “in groups” fail to demonstrate unrestrained, unequivocal loyalty, they are shunned.

The Racial Landscape Nine Years Later

Nine years later, what has changed? Now that’s a truly scary story.

First, after Charlottesville, racial grievance has wrought much more violence. Since August 2017, at least seven mass shooters around the world have been motivated by white supremacy,13 while one mass shooter may have been motivated by “leftist” politics.14

But even more alarmingly, today racial grievance has found its way back to the front and center of legal policy and state-sanctioned violence.

The most visible and violent of these changes has been immigration policy. During President Trump’s second term, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has undergone a multi-billion dollar expansion. And guess who’s being targeted in the agency’s recruiting efforts?15 Now, those who share the racial grievances of the young white men who formerly took refuge in marginalized white supremacist groups can instead find conditional belonging as armed federal agents, charged with kicking Black and brown people out of our country. Predictably, the results of such recruitment have been brutal. They wear masks and no uniforms. They roam the streets in unmarked cars. As Harris County, Texas District Attorney Sean Teare put it, “It appears, from everything we’ve seen, that either these agents are completely untrained, or intentionally putting themselves in situations where they can justify firing into cars.”16 Federal immigration officers have killed at least 11 people during Trump’s second term.17

Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court’s recent decisions on race have not only severely limited the Voting Rights Act, but have more broadly signaled that invoking race in the name of correcting past or ongoing racism violates the law – a policy I call “weaponized color blindness.”18 Indeed, the Court claims that correcting against white supremacy violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, both of which were enacted after the Civil War specifically to protect Black people.19

Reckoning With Our Racist Past

Of course, white grievance is nothing new. It has led to racial violence throughout our nation’s history. As Faulkner put it, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”20

After the Civil War, whites in the South had to live in a new world, where Black people were free and labor was not. An economy built on slavery collapsed. And racial grievance first ignited violence – the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and thousands of lynchings across decades – then led to legal policy changes resulting in Jim Crow, redlining, and ultimately today’s system of mass incarceration.

I have found dramatic illustrations of white racial grievance in my own family history. In 1861, my third-great grandfather, Charles Arden Russell helped the Knights of the Golden Circle burn down a San Antonio newspaper and chase its publisher out of the country. They attacked because the paper had dared to criticize the group’s pro-slavery goals of invading Mexico, creating a new nation-state, and cornering the cotton market.21

Similarly, after the war, Charley lost his county judge position when the Union Army took over state government in Texas during Reconstruction. In response, he penned a lengthy poem called “The Scallawag,” excoriating the white southerners who supported freed Black folks, as “negro-loving Scallawags!”22

We cannot heal without first knowing and understanding the truth about this past. But now, rather than facing the historical roots of today’s racial hatred, our federal government actively runs away from it. For example, we’ve watched the Trump Administration whitewash the wound by requiring the Smithsonian Institution to review its content and remove “divisive narratives.” According to the current President, the Smithsonian has focused too much on “how bad slavery was.”23

White “Allies” Must Not Continue To Be the Weak Link

Scary as these post-Charlottesville stories are, we must carry hope going forward. We cannot be paralyzed by the existential dread brought on by today’s headlines. Nor should we be content to shake our heads at that news and pat ourselves on the back for not being “one of them.”

Fixing racial harms is white people’s work and responsibility. Don’t get me wrong – none of us should feel guilt or shame for what our racist ancestors did and created. We didn’t make their choices. But, we inherited not only their DNA, but also their stories. Including the false, toxic stories of race and white superiority. And, white folks in this country continue to benefit from systems of law, housing, education, and economics, which our ancestors helped build – and which give advantages to white folks while harming People of Color.

True healing and racial repair require that us white folks do something different. That we break the historical patterns that have established white allies as the weak link limiting racial progress.24 That we heal the trauma of this country’s racial history that has buried itself in every type of American body – Black bodies, brown bodies, white bodies, and police bodies alike.25 That we create a culture around anti-racism work and build relationships with communities of color and groups led by People of Color. That we find joy in that work and each other while we do it. That the work becomes embedded in our way of life, rather than being a short-term passion project that leads inevitably to burnout.

We can do this. The work is hard, but also both joyful and transformational.

Shaking your head and lamenting the evils of those “other white people” is not going to cut it. It never has.

12

Feet in the Butter

On white people building belonging together inside movements for liberation

Note: This writing was previously published on my website in September, 2021…

Read more

a year ago · Marika Heinrichs

Editor’s Note: Of the six conversations with my ancestors in my draft book manuscript, this one is my favorite. This post from the archives comes in longer than most, but it’s still just an excerpt — I have to give you some reason to still want the book. As this post drops, I’m traveling home from a vacation across the Atlantic. Next Tuesday, I’ll be back with a new essay. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this piece from the manuscript.

Comanche, Texas, October 1932

It’s early afternoon, sunny and about 70 degrees. I’m standing outside a large, Victorian home. It’s limestone, with two stories, and a steeply-gabled roof with a turret above the front entry. I think about Lyman’s parents’ tiny home in St. Mary’s which I visited in 1872,1 and marvel at how Lyman’s lifestyle has changed since then. And I didn’t see the even smaller and more primitive house in Helena, where my third-great uncle Lyman grew up as Charley and Emeline’s oldest son.

Lyman’s niece, my second-great aunt Alice, opens the door, smiles widely, and immediately brings me in for a bear hug. She releases me and motions inside. “C’mon in, honey. We’ve got sweet tea and lemonade ready. I can make some coffee if you want it. I’ve only been here for a bit, but Uncle Lyman’s already gotten himself into storytelling mode, so your timing is pretty good.”

I can’t help but return the smile. “Yes, Ma’am. Thank you very much.” Alice, 43 years old, is wearing a modest floral dress with a mid-calf hemline. She’s tall and broad-shouldered, with gentle eyes that twinkle in a way that reminds me immediately of my grandmother Happy.

In Lyman’s entry hallway, I find dark wood paneling evocative of stuffy, exclusive men’s clubs, with a gilded mirror hanging above a console, where a small, caricatured wooden Native American figure points to a sign, “Welcome to our Comanche home.” In front of us, to the left of the hallway, is a staircase. Beside the mirror, on our right before the stairs, hang three small, framed flags – the Stars and Stripes, the Texas flag, and the Confederate battle flag. My anxiety level ticks up a few notches. I knew what I was walking into, but the rebel flag provides a very concrete reminder of how difficult this conversation might be.

Alice leads me past the stairs and down the hall. We pass a formal parlor to our right, then enter a swinging door to a dining room, where 82-year-old Uncle Lyman sits at a large, mirror-polished, formal wood dining table, sipping a tall glass of iced tea.

When he stands to shake my hand, I can see he’s a few inches taller than I am – 5’10” or maybe slightly shorter. His beard is long and mostly white, but his back is straight and his gray eyes are piercing.

“Nephew Steven! I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. Welcome to our not-very-humble abode. I am hoping God will forgive me the sins of wastefulness and pride in owning such a splendid old house and putting just two tiny old people to live in it. It’s good and comfortable for sharing a visit with family, though. Pardon me for not giving you the grand tour, but I save up energy after doing my chores in the morning. Having a few afternoon visitors is just what my soul needs to lift any passing guilt that might shadow me for sitting a spell, which is exactly what I would be doing, even if you were not here.”

I laugh. I may need to be pretty aggressive just to get a word in. And on cue, Lyman starts talking again.

“Alice – my wife Alice, I mean – is off to a Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting, or something of the sort. It may not surprise you to learn she takes advantage of every opportunity to leave my company. I have been informed that my bubbly personality can have the tendency to wear on folks, after a while. Anyways, she sent her love and her regrets for missing you. She made the drinks and the sweets for us before she left. Now I am going to sit back down, which sometimes requires a good while to do. Maybe you can start to talking while I get to it. Just be sure to keep your damn voice up. I’m half deaf. And the other half ain’t too smart.”

“Yes, sir.” I think Lyman’s a lot like his father – a bit louder, a bit more gregarious and funnier, and probably far better-tempered. But still, a lot like Charley.

Lyman smiles. “You came to the right place, Nephew. The two of us are the true lovers of history in this family. I ‘spect Alice and I will show a fair bit of enthusiasm. Might be that you need to interrupt us every now and again. Just don’t kick me in the right knee. That one acts up every now and then – but generally only when I try to use it.”

“Yes sir. Left knee only, then.”

Lyman nods. “I see you are a quick study. Now, what do you want to ask us?”

I turn to my grandmother’s Aunt Alice (Lyman’s niece). “I have a lot of questions for you, but if you don’t mind, I want to start with a few for Uncle Lyman.”

She laughs. “Honey, I am on the edge of my seat to hear what happens between the two of you. Age before beauty. Y’all take your time.”

I decide to start with something easy and close to Lyman’s heart. “OK, then. Uncle Lyman, I know you’ve been a Freemason pretty much your entire adult life, yes?”

“Your information is correct, young man.”

“Tell me why.”

“Well, much as I love hearing myself talk, I find that talking is even better when I can get someone besides myself to listen in. And, occasionally, I even enjoy hearing what those other people might have to say. I have been to a meeting at my Masonic lodge every month for more than 60 years. I have been to a few different lodges over the years because I moved as a young man, but I would guess I have missed only a dozen or so meetings in that entire time – it is a rare year that I miss one. I go for the fellowship, son. And because I believe in the principles.”

I nod. “What principles are you talking about?”

Alice interrupts. “I think Uncle Lyman and the Masons especially appreciate the principle of not having to listen to women speak their mind.”

Lyman laughs. “My niece and I have had some lively conversations about the fact that the Freemasons do not admit the fairer sex. I keep telling her that she would not last 10 minutes in one of those meetings, what with the smell of the cigars and the farts from a bunch of old men.”

Alice lifts a brow. “I could bring a fan. And many of the ladies I know are capable of overcoming far more than the smell of tobacco and flatulence.”

Lyman laughs. “I do not doubt it, young lady. You know I never have, at least when it comes to you. Now, let me get back to answering our nephew’s question. I fear I now have to ask you to say it again, Steven. My memory works just about as often as my right knee.”

I shake my head and smile. “Yes, sir. I just asked which principles of Freemasonry you believe in?”

“Ah. I think the most important one is the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We also believe in honesty, duty to community, and a Supreme Being. And we believe in loyalty to the United States of America and the principles of democracy for which this country stands.”

Now I need to start getting to the point. “Thank you. That’s helpful. Now, you are also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans?”

“Yes.”

“What is your understanding of the guiding principles of that group?”

“Nephew, both you and I are lawyers. As a lawyer, I have a pretty good nose for smelling a trap. Are you trying to set a trap for me?”

I smile. “Uncle Lyman, if there is a trap in that question, then it comes from the principles themselves, not from me. I’m just asking what the principles of the SCV are.”

Alice fidgets in her chair. As a devoted member of the United Daughters of the Confederates, she is paying very close attention.

Lyman nods. “Pardon me for just a minute. I believe I can shortly put my hands on a cheat sheet.”

At this point Lyman walks out of the room toward the parlor, where I had noticed some bookshelves. He returns after a few minutes, holding a small booklet, titled The Constitution of the United Sons of Confederate Veterans. Lyman flips to one of the first pages, reads for a few minutes, then looks back to me. “All right, Nephew. Here you go. Here is how I understand the purposes of the Sons of Confederate Veterans: to unite Confederate descendants; cultivate friendship; encourage spreading the South’s true history; collect historical data and relics; care for disabled veterans, widows, and orphans; erect monuments and mark graves; and instill veneration for Confederate leaders and principles into descendants.”

I nod. “Thank you, Uncle Lyman. Now, can you tell me in a nutshell, what is meant by the ‘South’s true history?’”

Lyman pauses, but Alice jumps in to help him. “I can tell you, Steven.”

“Thank you, Aunt Alice. Go right ahead.”

“We call it the ‘true history of the South’ because, after the Civil War, many northerners spread lies about the War Between the States, the reasons the South left the Union, how the South conducted itself before and during the war – including in the treatment of slaves, and what the slaves’ attitudes were toward their masters.”

“Can you share with me specific examples of the ‘lies’ you’re talking about?”

“Of course. For example, many northerners claim that the South entered the war solely to defend slavery. That’s not the case. Slavery was an issue, but the primary reason that the southern states seceded was because the federal government was trampling those states’ rights as sovereign entities.”

I look at her with brows raised. She has paused to let me respond, and I do. “Was there any particular states’ right that was driving the complaint that the federal government was trampling states’ rights?”

Alice’s nostrils flare. “One was slavery. But it was the general principle of independent sovereignty, as established by the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which drove the states’ decisions to leave the Union.”

I am not going to let her move on before we have hashed this one out. “And were the southern states always faithful to the idea of the independent sovereignty of each state, over the federal government?”

“Of course.”

“Ah. I assume, as a historian, you are familiar with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850?”

“Yes.”

“In the Fugitive Slave Act, the federal government commanded northern states to turn over any fugitive slaves that had escaped and fled to a free state. The Act provided for severe criminal and civil penalties for anyone in a free state who harbored fugitive slaves or who interfered with their capture. That federal law explicitly said that local laws relating to personal liberty could not be used to get around the Act. What was the position of the South with respect to the states’ rights at issue in the Fugitive Slave Act, Aunt Alice?”

Alice’s chair scrapes the floor as she sits upright abruptly. “Of course the South supported that law. It was about protecting their constitutional interests in their property.”

Bingo. “And the South’s interest in protecting their property interests in enslaved people was more important than the free states’ rights to decide and enforce their own sovereign laws that would apply in their own states. Right?”

The ice in Alice’s glass tinkles as she fidgets with it. “Right.”

I laugh, with my arms stretched wide, hands upturned. “And you don’t see the inconsistency here?”

My grandmother, Happy, wrote of her Aunt Alice, “For such a jolly woman, Aunt Alice was the most narrow-minded, set-in-her-ways person I ever knew.” Alice was an elementary teacher, and Happy also reported that she would give her students a “Mad Bull” look whenever they were acting out.

And now the “Mad Bull” emerges.

“Those were entirely different situations! The Yankees had no property interest in those fugitive slaves! Lincoln was planning to set the slaves free in the South – and ultimately did do that – without compensating the owners a penny! The Fugitive Slave Act didn’t cost the Yankees a dime, unless they broke the law and got fined for it.”

I sigh. “You actually don’t see any inconsistency, do you?”

“You are damned right I don’t.”

I turn to Uncle Lyman. “Are you ready for your next question, Uncle Lyman?”

“Ready and willing, sir.”

“OK then. I’m going to stick to the same topic. Do you believe the primary reason for the Civil War was slavery?”

Lyman frowns and peers over at Alice. He shakes his head. “Much as I fear what my niece is going to do to me when you leave, I have to admit that war was mostly about slavery.”

Alice scowls. “You better guard that right knee, Uncle.”

“Thank you for the fair warning, my dear.”

I laugh again. “Maybe I better get in-between you.” I look at Lyman. “Is slavery consistent with the principles that the Freemasons adhere to?”

Lyman hesitates. He looks away for at least thirty seconds before turning back to me. “No. As God is my witness, I do not believe that it is.”

Alice stands up. “I thought you were a Baptist? The Baptists have always preached that the Bible supports slavery. Do you reckon you will still be a deacon in your church if I tell your preacher what you just said?”

Lyman looks pained. “I know, my dear. I know. And there are places in the Bible that provide support for slavery. But the Good Book also teaches us that ‘all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.’ It also says, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’”

True to form, Alice does not give up. “But the slaves were happy. When the Yankee soldiers tried to convince them to leave their families and fight for the Union, they refused, and defended their families.”

I turn to her. “Alice, think about what you are saying. I know that the United Daughters of the Confederacy have been spouting these kinds of stories for decades. But, if it were true that most slaves were happy, why did so many slaves escape? How did slaves react after they finally learned that they were emancipated? On the flip side, who benefits from a story that says that the slaves were happy?”

The “Mad Bull” returns. “Now you are just calling me a liar.”

I shake my head. “All of us want to believe the stories that the people we love and respect tell us. Those stories shape us. It’s natural that you would believe them. But sometimes, those stories just aren’t true. This particular story is not only false, it’s also extremely poisonous. It has led to ongoing suffering, pain, and death for Black people and other People of Color. That suffering continues even in my time.”

Lyman looks at Alice tenderly. “Dearest, think about the Golden Rule. Would YOU have wanted to be enslaved? Even for a day? Even for an hour? You say the slaves were happy. I don’t believe it was so – at least, I don’t think they were happy to be enslaved. But even if they were, making them slaves would violate the Golden Rule, because YOU would not want to be enslaved.”

This finally causes Alice to pause. She says nothing.

I turn back to Lyman. “Uncle Lyman, can you imagine yourself as the descendant of an enslaved person?”

He cocks his head. “I have a very active imagination, young man.”

“If you were descended from a slave, how would you feel when you saw statues of Confederate leaders erected in a public square?”

He does not answer for a very long time. His head is bowed and his eyes are closed. Alice watches him, and her foot taps nervously.

Finally, he looks back up at me. “I have to admit, Steven, I think I may have oversold the limits of my own imagination. The more I tried to put myself in that position, the more I realized that being Negro would have changed every aspect of who I am and how I live in this world. If I were Negro, I do not know with any certainty what I would feel when I saw a Confederate statue. But, I think it would probably be upsetting.”

“Thank you for taking my request so seriously, and for the honesty of your response.” I pause. “Why do you think it would be upsetting for a Negro to see those Confederate statues?”

He snorts. “You do not let up, do you, Nephew?”

I decide to challenge him. “Are you still up for this?”

He straightens in his chair. “You know I am.” Then, he takes a deep breath. He again bows his head. After 10 long seconds, he looks up. “If I were Negro, the Confederacy would stand for slavery. Any Confederate symbol would remind me that my ancestors were not allowed to be free. And it would make me think that the people who put up that symbol or statue do not believe that I should be free, either.”

I am stunned that he got that far. Almost speechless. I look at Alice, who appears distraught. But she remains silent.

I turn back to Lyman. “Thank you.” I hope he understands how much I mean it.

He looks at me. “Son, I have been walking this earth for 82 years. I grew up in a home with a slave Mammy. And when I was 14 years old and thought I was a young man, I lived with a little Negro girl who stayed with my family even after she became free. If you had asked me when you walked in here how I felt about those two Negroes, I would have told you without hesitation that I loved them.”

Lyman pauses to take a sip of tea. He takes out a handkerchief and wipes his brow. He takes another deep breath, then he goes on.

“Both of my parents taught me the Golden Rule when I was very young. And the Masons have been a fundamental part of who I am for more than 60 years. But until about five minutes ago, I do not believe I have ever in my life spent a lick of energy into thinking about what it would really be like to be a Negro.” He looks back up at me, then says, “I reckon I am the one who ought to be thanking you.”

His eyes are dry, but mine are not. I reach out with both of my hands and take his. I hold them there for a few moments.

Alice has been silent for several minutes, until now. Her eyes flit toward her uncle, then away. “Uncle Lyman, that was … something. Something I need to think on.”

I stand up and look at both of them. “I can’t express in words how thankful I am that the two of you have let me visit with you today. Uncle Lyman, your home is beautiful. And so are you, Old Man. Keep thinking about that Golden Rule for me. Aunt Alice, I hope you will think longer about what we have talked about. I appreciate how both of you have been so honest with me today, and listened to me so carefully. Thank you again.”

Alice surprises me, and draws me in for a hug. “Come here, Nephew. You are a good egg, for a Yankee sympathizer.”

Lyman laughs, and also embraces me. “Young man, you can come back any time you like. If you wait too long, I will not be here to greet you. But that will probably make your visit more agreeable.”

As I walk toward the door, the Confederate flag in the hallway reminds me of how big Lyman’s breakthrough was. And a glance at the wooden “Indian” reminds me of one piece of history that we did not talk about, which still bothers me.

I walk out the door, and briefly look around, shaking my head that I am in a town named “Comanche.” I feel shame at what the Comanche ancestors must think of this place now.

______

Join the conversation: Drop a comment below:

• White people created the stories of race and white superiority to dehumanize Black people and justify their enslavement. Those false stories persist. How can we break down those stories and create new stories that invite white people to empathize with People of Color?

• What stories have you had to unlearn?

I read and respond to every comment.

Editor’s Note: This was originally published on December 16, 2025. As always with the archival posts, I hope that new readers enjoy it for the first time, and that you loyal old-timers will get something new out of it this time around.

Content Note: Contains explicit 19th century hate speech claiming “inferiority” of “negroes.”

On May 13, 1861, the Knights of the Golden Circle (“KGC”) burned down the Alamo Express newspaper building, while chasing its editor and publisher out of the country on threat of lynching. At the time, my third-great grandfather was the “Adjutant General” of the KGC in Texas, and there’s little doubt he played a role in the terrorism.

Charley Russell and the KGC sought to create a police state governed by patrols of armed white men controlling (and, inevitably, lynching) Black bodies. Today, the uniforms, gear, and weapons look different, but the outcomes are much as Charley imagined them. From slave patrols and the Klan, to George Floyd and ICE raids that tear families apart, white control of Black and brown bodies has persisted – as has white control over those of any race who stand in opposition.

The Paramilitary Group: Knights of the Golden Circle

Charley’s son Lyman (Happy’s great Uncle Lyman, the genealogist) wrote a 12-page biography of his father that has been passed down as part of my family’s legacy photos and documents. He clearly adored his father, and the biography takes pains to excuse certain faults. But whitewashing and apologetics do not erase the facts. Lyman wrote:

In the years immediately preceding the Civil War, a secret military society called the Knights of the Golden Circle became immensely powerful in the United States, particularly in the South. Its chief aims were to annex Mexico to the United States, to continue the institution of slavery, and to oppose the control of the Roman Catholic Church. Though little publicized, this organization found many supporters in Texas, and Charles Russell was among them. He was persuaded by his friends to attend the state convention of the K.G.C. in San Antonio on Feb. 22, 1861, though he was reluctant to do so. But, as he reported in a letter to his wife on March 4, 1861, “it so turned out, and I hardly know [how] I got into it, that I controlled the whole action of the Convention and did almost everything that was done there.” On this occasion, his five years of experience with the U.S. Army enabled him to understand quickly the working of the organization, and he presented his knowledge with such force to the assembled members that he was unanimously elected “Adjutant-General for the State of Texas.”

The organization was secret, but those in its ranks knew exactly what they were getting into. In the 1850s and 1860s, during the initiation ritual of the Knights of the Golden Circle, new members were told, among other things:

[Speaker 1, “Captain”]: a false philanthropy of the Northern people would set … negroes free – and allow them to become Moroons, as in Haiti and Jamaica.1 They would bring this negro on a par with the white citizens socially and politically.

[Speaker 2, “Guide”]: This can never be, since nature has clearly marked their inferiority. The white race or the black must rule, and we prefer that it shall be the white.

[Speaker 3, “Lieutenant”]: Slavery is a conservative institution that guarantees peace and quiet in society and opposes every innovation of the laws and traditions of our fathers. Where climate and soil will justify, it will flourish and exist.2

Charley’s Role and the Home Police Plan

The Knights of the Golden Circle was a paramilitary organization, and it sought to establish a police state. As the chair of the KGC’s Committee on General Military Affairs, Charley wrote of the group’s “purpose of making the K.G.C. effectual as a home police,” in order to quell any threat of “servile insurrection.”3 Among other things, Charley’s plan for the KGC to become a “home police” almost certainly envisioned the KGC organizing patrols to catch runaway enslaved people. KGC “General Regulation 6” stated “It shall be the duty of the military company in each Castle [local chapter] to aid and assist the civil authorities in bringing to justice all offenders against the laws of the State of Texas in relation to slaves and free persons of color; and it shall be the duty of said Military company to act as a police company under the laws of the State.”4

For Charley’s part, much of this military organizational work took place in the immediate aftermath of the KGC’s Texas convention in February 1861. That KGC Convention in San Antonio ended only days before Texas held the second session of its Secession Convention in Austin. Charley was a substitute delegate to the Secession Convention in that second session, replacing the original Karnes County representative. On February 23, 1861, former Union soldier Charley A. Russell voted in favor of secession, as did Texas. The Texas secessionists drafted a list of “causes which impel the state of Texas to secede from the union,” which provided in part:

[T]he non-slave-holding States… [have] proclaim[ed] the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.5

They Burned a Newspaper

On March 5, Texas joined the Confederacy and went to war.6 But even after Texas joined the war, Charley and the KGC were still bringing the group’s own martial forces to bear. That included waging terror on white journalists who criticized the Knights’ authoritarian plans.

In November 1860, the Alamo Express newspaper had published extensive excerpts from an Austin speech by national KGC leader George Bickley. Bickley proclaimed that “Our people [of the South] must present an unbroken front – no division should now be tolerated.”7 Bickley also admitted that the KGC had been secretly spying on travelers, and marking their baggage as “suspicious” without their knowledge.

In response to Bickley’s public comments, the Alamo Express decried that “We would hold no political party responsible for this secret order [of the KGC]; but trust that all parties will disavow it as a secret political engine. In its secrecy, in its police espionage and its avowed southern confederacy disunionism, we see nothing but mischief.”8 The newspaper added that the KGC was an “ambitious scheme of a few reckless bad men.”9 After that, the Express continued to call out the KGC on frequent occasions.

Six months later, on May 13, 1861, two local “Castles” of the KGC burned down the Alamo Express newspaper building. It was “later determined that the KGC had intended to hang [James P. Newcomb, the publisher of the Express], and either hang or banish some 150 prominent citizens of San Antonio suspected of disloyalty to the new order.”10

On May 16, 1861, just three days after the KGC burned down the Alamo Express, Charley Russell posted an “Address to the Knights of the Golden Circle in Texas” in the LaGrange Southern Rights Democrat. There, Charley whipped the KGC membership into a martial frenzy, reminding them of their special duty to the Knights, independently of their duty to the State of Texas:

The time has come to shake off the idle day dreams of peace, and prepare for battle. No vain hope can now hover over us. There is no room for hope. No idle words are now needed, but strong arms and willing hearts. War is upon us; our homes and firesides are threatened with invasion. I need not exhort you to arm and prepare for the conflict…. But while I am satisfied with your patriotism and your bravery, I am fearful that many may forget amid the absorbing events of the day, the obligation which they owe to the Order of Knighthood in which we claim to be brethren.11

Why This Still Echoes

Later, nearly all of the members of the KGC, including Charley, became soldiers for the Confederacy, and thus the war effectively swallowed the KGC in Texas. As a result, Charley’s plan to create a KGC police state never found traction. Nonetheless, Charley’s conception of using paramilitary forces to hunt down Black men is one that has chilling resonance more than 160 years later. As one recent scholar put it:

Police militarisation leads to more confrontational, violent, and deadly policing. The burden of militarisation falls disproportionately on racialised minorities. An ACLU report found that “the use of paramilitary tactics and weapons primarily impacted people of color.” Fatal police shootings of unarmed black people in the United States are three times higher than white Americans.12

Even before the KGC, the history of law enforcement organizations in Texas (and elsewhere) can often be traced back to efforts to catch enslaved people. “Police departments did not exist in the early United States. The first organized policing groups were slave patrols[.]”13 “Slave catching dominated early Texas security apparatus.”14 Charley added his own spin to that legacy by overlaying paramilitary organization over the existing concept of civilian “slave patrols.” Horrifyingly for me, in this respect Charley Russell was centuries ahead of his time.

Connecting all of these historical dots creates a nightmarish image in my head that I fear may haunt me: my great-great-great grandfather, cloaked in modern paramilitary gear, kneeling on the neck of a Black man.

In Between the World and Me, Black journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a letter to his then 15-year-old son, in the form of a 176-page book. He told his son:

Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.15

My chest tightened when I first read those words in 2017. But now they land even harder, because I know that destroying the Black body is a documented part of my heritage. And I now have three Black grandchildren. Eventually, I will somehow have to explain to them that this is part of their heritage as well.

Join the conversation: Drop a comment below:

• What’s your reaction to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ message to his son: “In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage”?

• What steps should white people take to heal that poisonous heritage? What steps are you willing to commit?

I read and respond to every comment.

Some of the same work that we white folks do to repair racial harm will also help heal ourselves and our Earth.

Ancestral Connections

I start with the roots of my own family history.

Last week you read about my tenth-great grandfather, Abraham Pieterson van Deusen, a prominent 17th century citizen of New Amsterdam, which we now call Manhattan.1 Abraham and the other Dutch colonists displaced the Lenape and several other tribes from the island, establishing a colonial settler pattern that would build and spread across the continent over the next few centuries – until we had wrested away almost all of our nation’s land from the First Americans.

Likewise, in Massachusetts around the same time, my Puritan ancestors “bought” land from the Norwottuck people for “220 fathoms of wampum, a large coat worth 8 fathoms of wampum…, and other gifts.”2 My ancestors there “settled” the town of Hadley. A few years later, my ninth-great granduncle, the Congregationalist Rev. John Russell, Jr., almost certainly preached fervently to his flock that God commanded them to destroy the Wampanoag and other native peoples.3

Almost two hundred years later in Texas, my third-great grandfather, Charles Arden Russell – the “slave trader in my family tree”4 – would continue the family and white American settler tradition of seizing native land and displacing native people.

In March 1861, just as Texas had entered the Confederacy and the Civil War, Charley wrote his wife Emeline from Austin, where he was a member of Texas’ Secession Legislature. Having just voted for secession, Charley assured his wife that he and his legislative brethren would also make the Texas frontier safe from native “savages,” even after the Union army left the state. “It is to be deplored that a more thorough course has not heretofore been taken in regard to the Indians. Our law will raise 4,000 men – 2,000 Rangers, 1,000 artillery, and 1,000 infantry – and it will be the policy to carry on a war of Extermination against the Savages.”5

At the time Charley wrote that letter, he was not only a member of the Texas Legislature, but also a leader in the paramilitary group, the Knights of the Golden Circle. In the words of Charley’s son Lyman, the KGC’s “chief aims were to annex Mexico to the United States, to continue the institution of slavery,” and to monopolize the cotton industry. Charley hoped that white folks would wipe Indigenous Americans off the face of the stolen land, and he and his brethren wanted to use that land to produce cotton with Black folks’ stolen labor.

These ancestral roots connect me to today’s Indigenous “Land Back” movement. But this connection is not about guilt and shame – it’s about justice, responsibility, healing, and preserving our shared Earth.

What Is the “Land Back” Movement?

Broadly speaking, the “Land Back” movement demands returning lands – and wealth generated by lands – to Indigenous people and communities. It is distinct from land-based reparations for Black folks – who for centuries had their labor stolen to work the land that had previously been stolen from Indigenous peoples. Racial repair for Black people requires access to land and housing as a matter of equity, and us white folks should embrace this as well. But for now, I’m focused on restoring “stolen land” to Indigenous people.

Across the United States, communities have begun to recognize the need for restoring stolen lands to Indigenous people. In 2024, the Yurok tribe received back 47,000 acres of their ancestral land along the Klamath River in northern California, from a joint effort by the Western Rivers Conservancy and California state agencies.6 This conveyance “safeguards the long-term health of this critical ecosystem and culturally significant sites along the Klamath, which is home to one of the most important fall Chinook salmon runs on the West Coast.”7

In Maine, the Trust for Public Land is partnering with Penobscot Nation to restore 30,000 acres of ancestral land to the tribe.8 In Illinois in 2025, the Legislature transferred Shabbona Lake State Park to the Potawatomi Nation. This land restoration came 175 years after the Illinois State Land Office sold the land at public auction, breaking a treaty that had granted the land to the tribe in perpetuity.9

Indigenous People and the Global Problem of Wildfires

Embracing the Land Back movement not only advances justice, but it helps preserve our planet.

As I write, wildfires burn across Canada and northern Minnesota, displacing thousands – most notably Indigenous communities – destroying millions of acres of forest, and creating smoke that has blanketed much of the northeast quadrant of the United States over recent weeks. In recent years, similar fires have destroyed communities in much of the western United States, Maui, and across the world. Climate change will continue to exacerbate fire risk globally over coming decades. We can manage this risk better if we return more land to the control of Indigenous communities, and borrow liberally from Indigenous practices in fire management.

For millenia, Indigenous peoples living in woodland areas have engaged in “cultural burning” practices, which have minimized the risks and impact of wildfires. Indigenous fire stewardship “involves small but frequent, low-intensity burns usually carried out during cooler, wetter periods. These burns reduce flammable fuel loads, encourage biodiversity and support livelihoods.”10

And the benefits of Indigenous land stewardship practices extend much farther than fire management.

The traditional practices that Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) apply in the stewardship of the environment, and the knowledge they have developed while living in and depending on natural resources, form crucial contributions to sustainability in the context of global environmental challenges including biodiversity loss.11

This should come as no surprise.

Many indigenous traditions center the reciprocal relationship between the people and the land. As Laguna Pueblo author Paula Gunn Allen writes:

We are the land ... that is the fundamental idea embedded in Native American life – the Earth is the mind of the people as we are the mind of the earth. The land is not really the place (separate from ourselves) where we act out the drama of our isolated destinies. It is not a means of survival, a setting for our affairs ... It is rather a part of our being, dynamic, significant, real. It is our self ...12

My ancestral colonial settlers embraced a different world view. For them, our planet’s resources were fuel to be extracted, consumed, and discarded in service of wealth and power. But all of us live and depend on this planet to survive. We all benefit from land stewardship that helps preserve our natural resources and extends the time that the Earth will sustain human life. Restoring Indigenous lands to the control of Indigenous people is not only about justice – it’s also about learning from those Indigenous folks how to partner, cherish, and connect with our Mother Earth.

How My Ancestral History Directs Me

We didn’t make the choices that our ancestors made. But we did inherit their stories, including the false, toxic stories of race and white superiority. And, of course, we also inherited the systems built from those false stories, which have ensured the continued racial hierarchy, preserving more wealth and power for us white folks.

This work is about taking responsibility to fix both the broken systems and the broken ideas that our ancestors’ poisonous stories passed down to us. This will not only correct injustice, but it will also help us. White people who engage in this work will be healing ourselves – in part by telling the truth about our history. But also by putting ourselves in right relationship with the Earth and with all the people, plants, and animals with whom we share it. And by helping preserve the Earth’s ecosystems so that they can continue to sustain all of us.

As a Negro spiritual and James Baldwin have warned us, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!”13 We don’t have to wait – the fires are here. But we can manage those wildfires and ourselves better by joining hands and learning from Indigenous communities and traditions. The answer is in how we form relationships with the land and with each other, acknowledging history, justice, and the need to preserve the Earth and our own health.

There’s no single path to follow. I’m not telling you to sign the deed of your house over to your local Indigenous nations. I’m not doing that.

But there are a lot of less severe actions we can take that will either directly provide stolen land back to Indigenous peoples, or will serve similarly-aligned healing purposes.

One possibility is to pay a voluntary land tax on the land you now occupy, to the people from which that land was stolen. In Seattle, thousands of folks are doing exactly that, through the group “Real Rent Duwamish.”14 Another possibility is to provide payments to Indigenous-run land trusts that buy back land. Here in Texas, for example, the Texas Tribal Buffalo Project does exactly that for Lipan Apache people.15 Third, you can support specific, named campaigns dedicated to a Land Back project. One current notable example is the effort by the NDN Collective and the nine Indigenous nations of South Dakota, demanding the return of the Black Hills of South Dakota to “the Great Sioux Nation.”16

Finally, you might be able to push for a group or institution of which you are a part – for example, your church, employer, or municipality – to return stolen land it holds, or provide some type of compensation for that land.

For all of these efforts, you need to do the legwork to find out what Indigenous-led groups are calling for. This is not “white saviorism.” We should not be dictating how we can “help” Indigenous people. Instead, we need to listen to how we can provide resources for the self-determination that Indigenous people are creating for themselves.

For my part, I’m still exploring which of these opportunities to participate in Land Back are best for me. Stay tuned over coming weeks and months, and I’ll let you know.

The fires will still be burning. Will we continue to stoke them, or instead make it possible for Indigenous wisdom to damp them out?

Editor’s Note: This is one from the Substack archives — an excerpt from one of my favorite ancestor conversations in the book manuscript.

Content Note: References to mass dispossession and death of Indigenous people.

New Amsterdam, May 1649

“Steven, you told me that you believe that the people of your nation have stolen to become rich. Obviously, you believe that they have stolen from the Indians, yes?”

My tenth-great grandfather looks me straight in the eye.

I don’t blink. “Yes.”

“This seems very important to you. I just want to tell you – if this belief of yours comes from this view that the Indians did not know what they were selling, then you should change your belief. That is not theft. That is not unfair. It is not wrong, and it is not cruel.”

***

Upon arrival, I’m inside in a fairly dim room. But the first thing I notice is the sound of heavy rain. I’m sitting on a bench at another long wooden table, not unlike the one where I sat in Hadley.1 There are several such tables crowded into this room, which is clearly the common room of the tavern. The room itself is much smaller than I had expected – only about 24 feet by 18 feet, with a low, smoke-stained ceiling that I would guess is less than 7½ feet high. Here also, as in Hadley, a central hearth dominates the room. From the hearth, I smell the day’s stew, already simmering in a large pot sitting on a grate over the fire.

I close my eyes for a moment to lean into the surreal. Here I am in lower Manhattan – on Broadway – where I’ve been many times before, to visit my family, who were here before it became New York.

I’m here at 8 a.m., because I wanted to talk to Abraham Van Deusen before his business picked up. My ancestor Abraham is one of New York City’s first tavern owners. However, he has also played other important roles in this colony, run by the Dutch West India Company. He came here as New Amsterdam’s first official miller.2 Later, as an elected member of both the “Twelve Men,”3 and then the “Eight Men,”4 he was one of Manhattan’s first city council members, although both groups had only advisory powers.

As I’m taking in the room, a child of about 12 approaches me and asks me if I would like a drink. “Yes, please.” Moments later, he brings me a watered-down beer.

After I sit for a few moments to think about what questions I’m going to ask him, Abraham opens the door behind the bar, and walks into the room.

“Steven!” Abraham briskly makes his way to my table. He’s an inch or two shorter than I am – about 5’6” – wearing a linen shirt with gathered cuffs, a fitted jacket, tailored wool pants, stockings, and some clunky wooden clogs. He is 42 years old. His oval face has some smile crinkles, but is otherwise unlined, and his thick, reddish-brown hair is parted to the side and cut relatively short – just covering the tops of his ears. He wears a mustache, and – you guessed it – a “Van Dyke” beard.

“I am so sorry to keep you waiting. One of the cider barrels spoiled overnight, and I had to empty it.” He gives me a small smile. “The mill doesn’t turn without the miller, eh?”

Abraham smiles. “Shall we break our fast while we talk?”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

Abraham heads for the stew pot hanging for the hearth, ladles us big servings in stoneware bowls, then sticks a wooden spoon in each and brings them to the table.

He bows his head and offers a quick prayer. “O Lord our God, we thank Thee for this food, which Thou in Thy mercy hast provided. Give us grateful hearts, and strengthen our bodies this day to serve Thee in all our labors. Bless the work of our hands, guide our thoughts, and keep us from sin. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

“Amen.”

The stew – made with bacon or salted pork, and seasoned with fresh rosemary and thyme – is far more flavorful than the Russells’ hasty pudding. And, as in Hadley, I find myself pretty hungry.

I start with a mostly-rehearsed bit I used in Hadley. Maybe I’m creating my own ritual.

“Thank you so much for welcoming me to your home. My name is Steve Baughman Jensen, your direct descendant. I don’t really know how our encounter has come about or why it works, but I know you have somehow been made aware of who I am and who I am to you. But, just to confirm, I will not be born until more than 300 years from now, in 1967. Eleven generations of your descendants have lived and died between you and me.”

Abraham nods. “I understand. I am honored you have chosen to speak with me.”

“I’ve come to understand more about you, and to understand more fully the context of how my family and my nation has become what it is in my time.”

“Which nation do you speak of, Steven?”

“Some time in your lifetime, England will conquer this colony. Then, one hundred and twenty-eight years from now, the colonists will successfully revolt and then create a new nation-state, called the United States of America. That nation-state will grow enormously large and powerful. In my time, more than 340 million people live in this nation, which spans across three thousand miles of fertile land.”

Abraham frowns. “I know the fact that you are here means that at least my oldest son survives this English conquest.”

I smile in reassurance. “All of you survive. You go on living here. And your descendants continue to thrive today. Many thousands of them.”

Abraham looks thoughtful. “What you have told me is amazing. Thank God that our family survives and thrives. But, the new nation you describe. It is difficult to fathom.”

I nod. “In many ways, I think the nation I call home – the United States of America – has been very amazing. But some of the same things that allowed that nation to grow rapidly and flourish economically came about because this country, and its institutions, have been very cruel.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that many of the people and institutions who have had power – they took it unfairly. They stole it. Their theft was violent, and it has caused devastation for hundreds of years on the descendants of the people from whom they stole.”

Abraham looks thoughtful. “Throughout history as I understand it, stronger men have always taken from the weak. Maybe it would be better if they did not, although I am not certain that is so. But I believe this has always happened.”

“I think you are probably right about history. But might does not make right.”

“Maybe you are right, Steven. My understanding of Christ’s teachings would agree with you. But… in my experience, God’s word and men’s will often have little to do with each other.”

“I agree. And, I would add that men’s will is often used to reshape God’s word.”

Abraham smiles. “Just so.”

More people have begun trickling into the tavern, despite the rain. Abraham does not appear to notice. His eyes remain focused on me.

“Tell me about your relationship with the people you call ‘Indians’ since you arrived here.”

His eyes turn downcast, and his shoulders slump. The Russells are not my only ancestors whose internal narrative about indigenous people has been dramatically altered by escalating violent conflicts. “During the years of Kieft’s War, the Indians terrorized us. And we frightened them right back. And killed them. We killed many. The war was so ugly in every way. Barbaric. I felt differently about the Indians after that war. It should never have happened. But it did, and my relationship with Indians has never been the same since then.”

“You opposed Kieft’s War?”

“Yes. Most of the other Twelve Men and I strongly opposed Kieft’s plan to wipe out the Lenape. Kieft was bloodthirsty. He ordered the murder of innocent women and children. But our opposition to Kieft was not about saving the Lenape. We wanted to save ourselves. We knew that war would be terrible. And terrible is exactly what it was. So many homes were burned. So many women and children had weeks of sleepless nights. And, yes, so many of their people were slaughtered.”

As I sit with Abraham, only four years have passed since the end of Kieft’s War. Its emotional residue remains thick. “First, thank you for taking the stand against Willem Kieft. That was courageous. I am proud that you did that. Second, how do you feel about Indians now?”

Abraham grimaces. “I have no single feeling. I feel disgust. I feel fear. I feel anger. And … I feel shame as well. That war should never have happened.”

“Do you trade with Indians now?”

“Oh yes. If you stay here all day, you will likely see some of them in this tavern. I am a businessman. I can put aside my feelings and trade with those who offer me value.”

This comment makes me consider how, for centuries, the story of capitalism – we exist in order to create profit – has often led businessmen to ignore other narratives and commitments – whether religious, political, or social.

So I pivot to a related topic. “Twenty-three years ago, a representative of the Dutch West India Company purchased this land, where New Amsterdam is now, from the Lenape. He paid the Indians the equivalent of 60 guilders.5 In my time, this village, on this land where we are now, has become one of the biggest, richest, and most powerful cities in world history. More than one million, six hundred thousand people live on this island in my time. The value of the land in my time is at least 160 million times the amount that the Company paid. Was that a fair trade?”

Abraham’s brows knit and his mouth twists. “I don’t understand. You seem to suggest that, because of what happened later, the trade was not fair. But that is not the test for what is ‘fair.’ The Company did not lie. They did not trick those Lenape. The Lenape knew the land and its value far better than my Dutch fellows did. And those Indians chose to sell it for an agreed price. How is that not fair?”

I nod. “I understand your point. But, in my time, many people – many scholars of history – believe that the Lenape and other Indians did not think that they were selling the land for all purposes and all time. The Indians have a different understanding of land and its relationship to people than the Dutch. They thought they were selling the right to share the land – the right to use and occupy it, while they continued to use and occupy it themselves. Many of them stayed here on the island after that ‘sale,’ yes?”

“Yes,” Abraham nods.

“If the Indians thought they were selling only a temporary right to share the land, does that change your mind about whether the transaction was fair?”

Abraham pauses. He takes a spoonful of now-cooled stew, and chews on the question. He swallows, takes a sip of cider, and looks me in the eye. “No, Steven. The deal was fair. There were no tricks. No lies. The Indians never told the Company that they thought they were selling only some type of temporary right. And the Company allowed the Lenape to continue to live here as long as they caused no trouble and did not interfere with our settlement. The Company’s generosity does not help your argument. The scholars in your time are wrong.”

I tilt my head. “Is it your experience that the Company is generous?”

He laughs aloud. “You are sharp, Steven. The Company allowed the Lenape to stay on the land because their trade and their knowledge were valuable.”

I nod. I’m thinking about moving onto the next topic, when Abraham interrupts my thoughts.

“Steven, you told me that you believe that the people of your nation have stolen to become rich. Obviously, you believe that they have stolen from the Indians, yes?”

“Yes.”

“This seems very important to you. I just want to tell you – if this belief of yours comes from this view that the Indians did not know what they were selling, then you should change your belief. That is not theft. That is not unfair. It is not wrong, and it is not cruel.”

I take a deep breath. There’s so much to say. But how best to say it?

“I understand, Abraham. I don’t agree with your perspective about the sale of this island where we are right now, but I understand it. And there are many other similar sales that have taken place already, and many dozens, hundreds, or thousands of others that will take place later. All of those ‘sales’ of land share the same issue. But even if I were to agree with you that all of those ‘sales’ were fair transactions for the reasons you have shared with me, that would not change my view that my nation has stolen from the Indians. And it certainly would not change my mind about the cruelty.”

“Why?” he asks.

“For many, many reasons. First, the people and institutions of my nation lied to the Indians over and over again. The government of my nation reached hundreds of treaties with Indian tribes, and – eventually – the government broke all of them. My government cheated the native people of this country every single time. Out of greed, and because my government had the power to get away with it.”

Abraham’s jaw drops. “I agree, Steven. That is wrong.”

“Thank you. And I have not yet gotten to the cruelty part. The European settlers of this country, together with the government, eventually slaughter millions of Indians. Millions of others die from diseases carried by the settlers. With violence, they force Indians off their native lands. They march the Indians – men, women, children, and elders – thousands of miles on foot. Huge numbers die on the journey. My government forces them to live together in small pockets of land far away from their homes, which the government calls ‘reservations.’ And, all along, my government – and the people of this nation – tell themselves that the Indians are enemies of God, and that these cruelties against Indians are all well-justified.”

I look at Abraham. I have his full attention. I keep going.

“Throughout most of my nation’s history, the European settlers who dominate my nation’s culture have told the story that the Indians are inferior to them, that they are dangerous savages, and they got only what they deserved. In my time, it has only been in recent years that many people – but still not everyone – have begun to reexamine these notions and this history, and come to a different conclusion. That is part of why I am here talking to you. I want to know and understand better my own family’s role in this history.”

Abraham looks away.

______

Join the conversation: Drop a comment below:

• When you hear ‘stolen land,’ what do you think people should do next—learn, pay, return, advocate, something else?

• Can a harm this large ever be repaired?

Whiteness is a tradeoff; humanity and interconnection for material resources and power – but with a gaping void at the centre that can never be satiated. What has to have happened to a people for them to make such a trade?

• Marika Heinrichs1

“You will be assimilated. … We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.” I am still terrified by the words, sounds, and images of the Borg, a fictional cyborg species from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Borg are tens of thousands of kidnapped humanoids from thousands of different worlds, all stripped of their personalities, relationships, and cultures. All forcibly transformed from living, individual beings into cyborg drones, serving a cold, rational, nearly unstoppable cubic machine, set on “assimilating” all that it encounters.

Resistance is futile.

Despite having been fascinated and horrified by the Borg since they first invaded my small screen in 1989, I had never given a thought to what the Borg might metaphorically represent.

But when I read Marika Heinrichs’ words above – describing the “gaping void at the centre that can never be satiated” – the image that sprang to my head was the Borg.

Once I saw it, there was no unseeing it. Going forward, for me the Borg will always be European colonial settlers. Or, more accurately, European colonialism, writ large. Stripped of their own pre-Christian ancestral cultures, colonists invaded, settled, destroyed, and assimilated new lands, peoples, and cultures. Then colonialism set up camp and gobbled up those who came too close. For European immigrants who later entered our country, the “melting pot” of the United States burned away most of the distinctiveness of their cultures. Irish, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, etc. instead became “white American.”

Of course, dark-skinned people who arrived on these shores – whether they came in chains or by choice – were not considered sufficiently human to go into that melting pot. Nonetheless, colonial whiteness “improved” itself by “adding their biological and technological distinctiveness to [its] own.”

What did this colonial Borg assimilate? Not just land. And not just people. But also languages. Songs. Cosmologies. Relationships with the Earth. Rituals for coming of age, fertility, birth, death, and everything in between. The world view that sees all of us as belonging to each other and the Earth, rather than competing to accumulate the maximum amount of limited resources that can be stolen from our planet.

As I write this on July 4, the nation prepares to watch performances from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., celebrating our country’s 250th birthday at the “Great American State Fair.” Fittingly, one of the scheduled performers was Vanilla Ice. Could theft of the cultural distinctiveness of Black folks get any more transparent than that?

Resistance is futile.

Fortunately, us Star Trek watchers know that the last bit is not true. The machine endlessly tells us that “Resistance is futile,” in the hope that we will all believe it. Many of us do. But, in the end, those of us who instead choose to believe in our own cultures, identities, and relationships – in each other – will win out. The Borg will be defeated.

And through community, relationships, and connection with our own bodies and our lost cultures, some of the Borg drones, who lost their humanity to that cold machine, will heal and come back to a new version of their former selves. Locutus of Borg once again became Jean-Luc Picard. Seven of Nine became a valued member of the crew of Voyager.

These stories of triumphant reclamation of humanity, identity, and culture point me back to the healing work of people like Resmaa Menakem and Marika Heinrichs, who urge us to work to heal the embodied trauma of “white body supremacy” that our culture has embedded in all of us. And to this project – Healing White History. To heal, we need to reclaim our bodies from the trauma of white-body supremacy. That work, in turn, requires us to heal our own ancestry.

Menakem explains that “Americans of all cultures and colors learn to acknowledge the inherited trauma of white-body supremacy embedded in all our bodies.” Only by working through that trauma can we “mend our bodies, our families, and the collective body of our nation.”2

As a licensed therapist, with decades of experience helping people deal with anxiety, depression, and trauma, Menakem emphasizes that settling our own bodies – and the bodies of those around us – is a learned skill, which develops with practice. The benefits of this skill are immeasurable. “If you’re white, you may discover that when you can settle and manage your body, you won’t feel a need to manage Black ones — or a need to ask Black ones to manage yours.”3

Menakem also teaches us how to face and move through the pain embedded in our bodies as white body supremacy. The process has five anchors: 1) Soothing yourself; 2) Noticing your bodies’ sensations, rather than reacting to them; 3) Accepting your bodily discomfort, rather than fleeing from it; 4) Staying present and aware of your body as the experience unfolds, with all of its uncertainties and ambiguities; and 5) Safely discharging any remaining bodily energy once the experience is over.4

This is how we start to reclaim ourselves from the Borg.

Working through the trauma of white-body supremacy requires imagination. We white folks have to imagine ourselves in the position of Black and brown bodies as they have been traumatized by white bodies across centuries. And, we also have to imagine ourselves in the bodies of our ancestors, who suffered trauma long before that racial hierarchy came to be.

Heinrichs asks “What has to have happened to a people” for them to trade their own humanity for material resources and power? Menakem has the answer: medieval European history. Centuries before American colonists created racial hierarchy, white bodies were traumatizing other white bodies with incredible cruelty – torture chambers, decapitations, burning at the stake, enslavement, and lynchings – not to mention psychological and cultural abuses, such as imposition of Christianity and erasure of ancestral spiritual practices.

For America to outgrow the bondage of white-body supremacy, white Americans need to imagine themselves in Black bodies and experience what those bodies had to endure. They also need to do the same with the bodies of their own white ancestors. And they need to ask themselves this question: “If we don’t address our ancient historical trauma, what will we pass down to our children, and to their children and grandchildren?”5

For us white folks, this ancestral work should include not only working through ancestral trauma, but also finding positive and connective elements of ancestral culture. As Marika Heinrichs points out, “[w]e all come from people who at one time held deeply embodied, reciprocal, and spiritual relationships with land and spirit that were expressed through ritual, song, and movement. Understanding how these ways of life were lost is part of the work of understanding and dismantling whiteness.”6 For example, she describes how the pre-Christian European “Maypole dance,” like many indigenous rituals, celebrates fertility, masculine and feminine energy, and the return of new life.7

My own work with the Healing White History project has focused on my more recent ancestors, starting in America’s colonial era. I have chosen ancestors who interacted with People of Color and helped build and spread the false story of racial hierarchy. But, even as I confront these ancestors, they have uniformly been loving and familial, even while I challenge their moral choices and world view.

At some points in my ancestral conversations, this emotional juxtaposition hit me hard. When I visited my Puritan ancestor the Rev. John Russell, Jr., his father John Russell, Sr., and their wives Martha and Dorothy in Hadley, Massachusetts in 1677, they were in the midst of war against the “heathen” Wampanoag people. I pleaded with them to recognize the humanity of the Wampanoag, in part by pointing out that, by my ancestors’ definitions, I am a “heathen” as well. They brushed aside this notion by patronizingly informing me that I may be among God’s chosen, but I’ve just not realized it yet.

This exchange shook me – quite literally.

But Martha brings me a blanket and wraps it around me, while handing me another mug of warm cider. Dorothy and the two Johns look across the table at me with tenderness.

Martha says again, “Steven, you are always welcome here.”

I finish the cider silently. I am still shaking. I put the mug back on the table. I look up at all of them. “Thank you for allowing me in your home. Thank you for answering my questions. I have to go now.”8

The results of these imagined encounters have been transformative for me – calling me to work on racial repair, including building this project to provide other white folks the chance to heal connections with their own ancestors.

Resistance is not futile. We can reclaim our bodies, ourselves, our culture, and each other.

1

Feet in the Butter

Our collective inheritance: Claiming white kin and the other side of righteousness

The last thing I want to do is write another think piece full of blame or advice. This is an edited version of a letter I wrote to the Embodied Ancestral Inquiry alumni on the day of Trump’s election to a second term. May we all find the people and communities with whom we can share deep purpose, reciprocity, and kinship in times of great fear and unrav…

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2 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Marika Heinrichs

7

Feet in the Butter

A Wild Dance

Note: This writing was previously published on my website in May 2022…

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a year ago · Marika Heinrichs

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”

• July 4, 1776

This weekend, across the nation, many Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Family barbecues, fireworks, parades, and swimsuits will abound. Recent immigrants and those whose families have been here since the 17th century will celebrate freedom and opportunity. But for many, the day will instead (or also) inspire sober reflection, not unlike Frederick Douglass’ July 5 speech to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society 174 years ago:

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.1

Civil rights for Black and Indigenous people have come a long way since Douglass spoke in 1852. But the gaps in inheritance he described still persist. Mourning them remains a rational choice.

To illustrate, I’ll paraphrase (and update) author and activist Ijeoma Oluo2:

• When more than 18% of Black Americans live below the poverty line, and the racial gap in poverty continues to expand,3 I don’t feel like celebrating.

• When Black households have one-tenth of the wealth of white households,4 I don’t feel like celebrating.

• When Black children make up 15% of our country’s youth population, but are detained at 5.6x the white rate and make up 46% of youth in criminal detention,5 I don’t feel like celebrating.

• When Native children are detained at 3.8x the white rate,6 I don’t feel like celebrating.

• When Black students are four times more likely than white students to be expelled or suspended from school,7 I don’t feel like celebrating.

• When Native American children have the highest rate of entry into the foster care system (more than three times the national average),8 I don’t feel like celebrating.

All of these racial inequities are rooted in historical injustices: slavery, genocide and land displacement, redlining, and segregation (among others). Yet today, our legal system tells Black and brown members of society that all such problems have been solved. For example, according to our Supreme Court,

[T]he Voting Rights Act led to “great strides” in the ensuing decades: “voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers.”9

And so our Supreme Court, like the Reconstruction-era Court of 1883, informs Black and brown folks that the law will no longer recognize past injustices against them.10 Instead, the law will become “color blind.” Which is another way of saying that the Court will strike down any attempt to use racial remedies to correct past racial injustices.

I call this weaponized color blindness. It’s systematized white grievance, and its effect goes far beyond voting rights.

After getting the green light from the Supreme Court on voting rights, the Trump Administration has announced open season on unwinding any and all programs that seek to correct past racial harms. On June 16, for example, the Department of Justice intervened in the lawsuit Flinn v. City of Evanston, to challenge the racial reparations program created by the city of Evanston, Illinois to remedy past racial housing discrimination, claiming that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because it directs payments only to Black people.11

According to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the reparations program is “Simply handing out money based on race. … It is race discrimination, pure and simple. And it is illegal.”12 Similarly, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton called the program a “blatantly unconstitutional reparations scheme” and a “woke, racist program.”13

We need to review what’s happened here:

1. From 1919 to 1969, the city of Evanston, Illinois intentionally discriminated against Black people in the area of housing, through passage of segregationist zoning ordinances, redlining, enforcement of restrictive racial covenants, and other racist policies.

2. In 2021, following study, the city issued a 77-page report documenting the harms from these racially discriminatory policies and practices.14

3. The city passed a reparations program in response to the harms it caused, providing for payments of $25,000 each to the people harmed and their direct descendants. So far, Evanston has made this payment to about 200 people.

4. Now, based on a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions claiming that the U.S. Constitution is “color blind,” white residents of Evanston have sued the city because the program only provides payments to Black people.

5. The United States Department of Justice has now intervened to support the plaintiffs, also claiming that Evanston’s reparations program is unconstitutional.

The Trump Administration’s position is shocking. Yet it’s also both completely on-brand for Trump, and a logical extension of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on race. The government is complaining about paying Black people for harms done to them because they are Black. And ridiculous as that sounds, if the Constitution is truly “color blind” as the Supreme Court has now said, then this lawsuit may succeed.

While our nation celebrates its 250th anniversary even as white grievance shapes our politics, the rest of the world recognizes that reparations programs like those enacted in Evanston are critical to human rights, healing, and transformation. On June 20, just four days after the DOJ intervened in the Flinn case, a large group of African and Caribbean countries has called for a formal apology and reparations from countries that benefited from the transatlantic slave trade.15 This decision followed a broader consensus reached in March 2026 by more than 123 countries at the United Nations, recognizing that transatlantic slavery was a “crime against humanity.”16

This broad international consensus on reparations for racial harm should be no surprise. In 2005, the UN adopted a resolution titled “Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.”17 And, while slavery may be a more obvious violation of international humanitarian law, intentional racial housing discrimination like that remedied by the Evanston program would also qualify.

So, this weekend, as the United States puts itself on a pedestal and champions its supposed exceptionalism, keep in mind this dichotomy: we are one of the few countries in the world that fails to support reparations for slavery and other racial harms. Instead, we claim that such reparations themselves are racist.

All of this would make perfect sense to my ancestors, who felt racially aggrieved for the rest of their lives after the Civil War. For them, after the Yankee army came in to run Texas during Reconstruction, and politicians granted Black people the right to vote and pursue their own paths, the world felt upside down. My third-great grandfather Charley Russell lost his county judge seat in 1866. His son wrote that “[d]uring these years, his health began to fail, and worry over his financial losses and over the general conditions during Reconstruction days contributed to his decline.”18

In my ancestors’ minds, the world could only be righted if both the Yankees and Black folks went back to their “rightful place.” In such a mythical place, racial reparations would feel racist.

After writing about that, I don’t feel like celebrating.

NOTE: This post was first published on Nov. 18, 2025. A lot of you are new here, and I know you haven’t read this yet. For those of you who have, I hope you’ll still give it another shot. Leave us a comment this time around!

Welcome to Healing White History. I’m writing a book about confronting my ancestors’ legacy of white supremacy. This Substack is where I’m building that work – sharing research, conversations, and reckoning in real time. What you read here will shape the final manuscript.

I thought I was honoring my family when I hung the poem by Charles Arden Russell, my great-great-great grandfather, in my den. My Mom found it in the family papers my Granny had preserved. Mom hired a calligrapher to copy it in elegant script, had it framed, and gave it to me as a gift. Years later, while researching our family history, I found two sentences buried on page 9 of Charley’s biography:

He frequently took part of his fees for services in land, traded successfully in land, and invested his surplus earnings in negroes. Although he had few slaves working for him, he profited by hiring out the slaves to others who needed them.

I read them again. And again. “Invested his surplus earnings in negroes.” I’d spent decades as an environmental lawyer, fighting corporations that treated regular folks as expendable. I’d convinced myself I was one of the good guys. And here was my ancestor – treating human beings as investments.

I walked to the den. Stood in front of the framed poem. Read his words: “the line of right is the limit of a good man’s action.” What “line of right” was he thinking about when he invested in Black people?

Looking at my own reflection in the glass. Years later I decided that, if Charley’s face was going to haunt me, I’d put it where everyone could see it. The photograph in my Substack avatar is him – not to honor him, but to face what he did [note: I’ve since changed the avatar]. I’m inviting you to face it with me.

I hadn’t just inherited keepsakes – I’d inherited a story. A story that said Charley was a pioneer, a founder, a music lover, and a devoted father. A story that shrugged off what he did with his “surplus earnings.” Stories decide who gets honored and who gets erased. My family’s story honored Charley. It erased the people he bought and sold.

And for years, I’d had that storyteller on my wall.

Charles Arden Russell was smart, ambitious, and skilled. He helped expand the Texas frontier (at the expense of Native peoples), helped found Helena and Karnes County, practiced law, surveyed land, and built both furniture and homes. He was a devoted father who pushed for his children’s education – rare on the frontier. As a lawyer myself, I cherished the idea that I had followed in Charley’s footsteps. Until I came to grips with the fact that he bought, sold, and leased human beings.

Charley grew up and was educated in New York, which abolished slavery in 1827 – when he was five years old. By the time he arrived in Texas at age 23, he had been exposed his entire life to the notion that slavery was wrong and should be illegal. Charley chose to settle his young family in the slave state of Texas anyway.

He wasn’t only an enslaver and trader. He also helped lead the Knights of the Golden Circle – a secret paramilitary organization devoted to preserving and expanding slavery. As chair of the KGC’s military committee, Charley designed a “home police” to suppress “servile insurrection.” (I’ll share the receipts and deeper history in a later post.)

In Texas and elsewhere, early organized policing grew from slave-patrol systems, and Charley’s “home police” sat in that lineage. When I connect those dots forward, the image that haunts me is of my great-great-great-grandfather in modern gear enforcing the same logic, with his knee on the neck of a Black man: control first, humanity last. Laws and institutions don’t appear from nowhere – they’re built from the foundation of a story. I’m writing this in 2025. Police violence against Black people remains an American epidemic. The systems Charley helped design – treating Black bodies as threats to control – echo in every viral video, every hashtag, every family’s grief.

My maternal grandmother – “Happy” Wylie – loved family history. Our family is privileged to have so much preserved: biographies, letters, journals, artifacts – Charley’s included. His son Lyman (the biographer) was a devoted genealogist who traced lines back centuries, and later generations added more. Granny spent hundreds of hours sifting and arranging, and late in her life she made scrapbooks for each of her children, including my Mom, Nancy.

My family has also celebrated Charles Arden Russell’s legacy by preserving his name. We’ve honored him by keeping his name alive – five generations of Russells, first names and middle names.

By long tradition, my family has cherished and honored Charles Arden Russell, consciously or not. I’ve learned that love and harm can travel in the same family heirlooms.

I’m writing a book, Healing White History: Courageous Conversations with My Ancestors, because I spent decades ignorant of how my family fit into slavery, genocide against Native people, and Jim Crow. I’m reckoning with that truth and asking what repair looks like now.

Each week, this Substack will contain excerpts from the book, plus other related content. In this series, I hold conversations with my ancestors. Charley goes first.

I’m going back to 1872 to confront Charley. I’m going to ask him to defend buying and selling human beings. I’m going to challenge his belief in the false story of white superiority. I’m going to try to understand how the man my grandmother celebrated was also the man whose story I’m dismantling.

Thanks so much to everyone for reading. Welcome to the adventure! I really hope you’ll stay with me so we can explore together ways to heal white history and work toward repair.

This is white people’s work. I’m doing mine.

Join the conversation: Drop a comment below:

• Have you ever discovered something in your family papers that made you rethink everything? What was it?

• What would you ask your ancestors?

I read and respond to every comment.

Leave a comment

I hope you find a real way to mark today. Not just a long weekend, but a few minutes to sit with what it commemorates, and why that freedom has not yet been fully realized.

In that spirit, I also want to share a new piece of the Healing White History project: www.stevebjensen.com. It’s where the Method, the ancestor research, and photos live together, and where they link to the essays on this Substack. It’s a place for new readers to see what this work actually looks like, and another place you can point others toward if they ask what you’ve been reading lately.

I’d love your feedback. What’s confusing, what’s missing, and what made you want to read more.

Thank you for being here, today and every Tuesday. This work only moves forward because people like you keep showing up for it.

— Steve

On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to spread the good news. Two hundred and forty-six years after the English privateer ship the White Lion landed at Hampton, Virginia with some “20 and odd” enslaved Africans, “[t]he people of Texas [were] informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” – General Orders, No. 3.

Today, we celebrate Juneteenth as a time of jubilation. And it certainly was. But it was much more than that. In 1865, about 250,000 enslaved people lived in Texas. The stories of their emancipation are mostly lost to us. But we know from first-hand accounts that those stories are about not only joy, but also uncertainty, loss, separation, and confusion.

One of those “mostly lost” emancipation stories belongs to a young woman named Airy, owned by my third-great grandparents, Charles and Emeline Russell. With the few facts I do have, I can imagine parts of the rest of Airy’s story – along with the story of her toddler daughter Bet.

On May 9, 1864, my great-great-great grandfather Charley sent the following letter to his wife Emeline, as he was on his way home from his duties as a Confederate soldier, where he had been stationed at “Camp Patterson”1:

Dear Emeline:

I arrived at Mr. Morrison’s today about 10 o’clock, all well and not yet got wet. I have closed the trade for the negro girl and her children. She tells me she is only a field hand, but she is young, and you must learn her how to do house work. Have patience with her and I think she is a willing hand. Keep her busy at anything that comes handy until I return. She can work out the corn and garden if it needs any work. Learn her to milk and have patience! Adieu, C A Russell2

According to the biography of Charley written by my grandmother Happy’s aunt, Alice Atkinson Neighbors, the name of the young Black mother that Charley bought from Morrison was Airy. Charley bought Airy and her two children – a toddler girl named Bet, and an infant son, who were with Emeline only a few days later, in mid-May 1864.3

Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865 and the Union army captured Confederate president Jefferson Davis on May 10. I don’t know how long it took for news of the end of the war to make it to the Russell household, but I’d wager that Airy and her two young children continued to live with the Russell family until at least Juneteenth, when the Union army made its way to south Texas and announced emancipation.

The mystery is what happened when that announcement came. We know some facts: Airy left the Russell home, along with her infant son. But the toddler girl Bet stayed with the Russells for decades – until she had grown up and married Pleas Morris in 1886 – eight years after Charley’s death in 1878.

Why did Airy leave her toddler daughter with her former enslavers? The question haunts me. And I suspect it haunted Bet’s entire life.

Airy’s choice – if it was her choice – was heart-wrenching. She was leaving her enslaved life with no money, no land, no tools, and no family other than her children. She had not been allowed an education and could not read. How would she take care of her children? How would she take care of herself?

Accounts of emancipation from other freed men and women illuminate Airy’s dilemma.

Felix Haywood lived through that first Juneteenth in Texas:

Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free. Just like that, we was free. … We knowed freedom was on us, but we didn’t know what was to come with it. … We thought we was goin’ to be richer than the white folks, ’cause we was stronger and knowed how to work, and the whites didn’t and they didn’t have us to work for them anymore. But it didn’t turn out that way. We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud but it didn’t make them rich.4

George Simmons, freed in Alabama, told an interviewer that the uncertainty of newly-freed existence led him to stay with his former master: “We didn’ know what to do and we didn’ know how to keep ourselves, and what was we to do to get food and a place to live? Dose was ha’d times, ’cause de country tore up and de business bad.”5

Hannah Plummer, freed in North Carolina, described her mother’s decision to leave their master despite the hardship:

When the war ended mother went to old marster and told him she was goin’ to leave. He told her she could not feed all her children, pay house rent, and buy wood, to stay on with him. Marster told father and mother they could have the house free and wood free, an’ he would help them feed the children, but mother said, “No, I am goin’ to leave. I have never been free and I am goin’ to try it.”6

Airy apparently made a different choice than Hannah’s mother. Or, possibly the Russells took that choice away from her.

White families kept Black children after Emancipation far more often than I had realized. Sometimes this happened without the consent of the children’s parents.

In Texas and other southern state legislatures after the Civil War, lawmakers created Black Codes that included provisions for “apprenticeships” for freed children working for their former owners.7 The law expressly permitted “masters” to inflict “moderate corporeal chastisement as shall be necessary and proper.” The law also provided that masters were permitted to pursue “runaways” and bring them back into the master’s service.8 In light of the law’s inclusion of the words “master” and “runaway,” and the express grant of power to the “master” over the body and freedom of the “apprentice,” little imagination is necessary to understand that this apprenticeship law was intended as a new version of racial slavery.

For tens of thousands of Black folks, the years following emancipation were wondrous. Given that freed men and women started with nothing after enslavement, what they managed to accomplish is breathtaking. They built communities, including Black schools, churches, and businesses. They owned land. They voted, won elections, and helped govern. And then came the backlash of white racial grievance. As Dr. W.E.B. DuBois described, “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery.”9

The Russell family and their descendants helped ensure that this moment in the sun was brief. Charley wrote a scathing poem called “The Scallawag,” venting his rage at the “Negro-loving,” “Ku Klux-fearing” white men who dared to support freed men and women. Charley and Emeline’s children and grandchildren would spread the false story of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy for decades. That story, in turn, would help launch the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan, and lay the groundwork for decades of Jim Crow segregation.

Which leads me to wonder whether the Black triumph during Reconstruction – however brief – applied to Airy at all. Did she have her own moment in the sun? Did she find love, prosperity, community?

And how did she handle her loss? Who made the decision to separate her from Bet? Did they ever see each other again?

I will never know the answer to most of these questions. But one way or another, I believe Airy’s loss stayed with her the rest of her days. Even if it was her choice, and even if it was the best choice available for everyone.

Bet’s story is another chapter, but we know that Emancipation left her without a mother. She grew up in a household where she always had a meal, clothing, and a roof over her head. She also lived as a “servant,” in a home where Black folks were considered less than fully human. And, true or not, I suspect that Bet lived believing that her mother had left her there.

For me, Airy’s story hits hard. My grandmother proudly told Bet’s story – how her great grandmother raised a Black child after the war with love, bucking racial stereotypes. That story has serious flaws. One of them is that it erases Airy.

As you celebrate Juneteenth this week, spend a few moments thinking about Airy and Bet.

“What we saw at the Capitol [on January 6] is not a mental health issue, it is a communal health issue that the sickness has become standardized.”

• Resmaa Menakem1

During a decade spent exploring my own racial conditioning, among my most disturbing discoveries has been my own internal aversion to the behaviors and traits that are the antidotes to white supremacy culture. I live in my head, not my body. As an introvert, I quake at the idea of creating new relationships. At my core, I have internalized the Western frontier mythology that society’s problems can only be solved by exceptional, gifted individuals, rather than through community, collective effort, and learned skills.

It’s been so easy for me to spend my life believing that race is not my problem. To believe that I am the “right kind of white.”2 Resmaa Menakem has had enough of my kind of racial hubris.

“What I always tell white people is stop divorcing yourself from your cousins. Stop, because it is unhelpful. Figure out how is that part of me ... what you saw at the Capitol were police officers, clergy, florists, bankers, fire people, a blogger, you saw every walk of white life you could imagine.”3

Menakem is a therapist and trauma specialist, and the author of My Grandmother’s Hands, a 2017 book that describes how the toxic story of “white body supremacy” has caused trauma for people of all races – Black bodies, brown bodies, white bodies, and police bodies. Menakem’s book – and his work as a therapist and activist – provide body-centered practices to help heal that racial trauma.

Menakem has advice for people like us, white readers – those who think of themselves as white “allies”:

They love declaring that they’re independent from other people, but they haven’t developed a culture that can sustain what they believe to be true. … They’ve developed strategy, but not culture, not a lifespan culture that says we’re going to cultivate a living embodied anti-racist culture among white people.4

My Healing Story

Deep breath.

I am pushing past my conditioning and discomfort to dive into body-centering, relationship, collectivism, and connection – to my body, to the world, and to everyone in it. And you, my fellow white folks, can do this too. To stop this American cycle of cultivated fear and othering, I believe we have no other choice.

There are many pathways to these cultural antidotes – and other antidotes that I don’t know about. I don’t pretend that my own answers will work for you. But they might.

Almost exactly a year ago, connections found me during a weekend spiritual retreat I shared with a group of nine other privileged white men.

Pacific Northwest, Spring 2025

I am with nine other white men sitting around the remnants of last night’s campfire. We are starting the second day of our spiritual retreat with a seated meditation. It’s difficult for me to imagine many better places for the task. Cedar and Douglas fir trees on three sides embrace us, while white water provides a roaring backdrop, just thirty yards below. The morning is crisp, clear, and rich with the smell of evergreens and spring growth.

My bare feet rest on cool, damp soil as I follow our guide’s instructions and soften the focus of my gaze. I breathe deeply, imagining my breath carrying the sun’s radiance to every atom of my body. Minutes pass. I feel warmer. Fully awake, yet near peak relaxation. Becoming more aware and connected with my body, the nine men with me, and the world around me.

Suddenly, I am overcome by a strong sense of shame for all I’ve done to harm the earth. For all we have done. Plunder and ravage. Pollute, consume, and discard. Repeat. But the moment I recognize this shame, I perceive something outside me responding. I feel a warmth extend from the Earth beneath me. I am forgiven. I am loved. I am held. And, in my head, the comforting presence tells me “I’ve got this. And I’ve got you.”

The entire encounter lasts no more than 20 or 30 seconds. But it is the most mystical experience of my life. Here, on this now privately-owned land stolen generations ago from Cowlitz and Chinook native peoples, this white, 58-year-old former environmental lawyer was finally introduced to the Earth.

After the meditation session, I share my experience with the other men, who seem moved by it – truly happy for me. We eat breakfast together in the sunshine. And then, around noon, we move into the great room of the cabin, with our mats, sleeping bags, and blankets.

Seven of us are gathered in a rough circle. The other three men – two who are professionally-trained psychedelic therapists, including my brother Adam, and a third who is a former Buddhist monk – facilitate our ritual. In gratitude and curiosity, the seven participants each swallow a dose of LSD, don our eyemasks, and lie down, with our heads pointed toward the room’s center, and each other. The music begins – rhythmic, repetitive, and grounding.

Early in the experience, I hum an extended note from music underlying a chant playing on the speaker. Then, I hear a friend to my right humming a harmony – or perhaps the same note – or maybe doing some of both. Feeling those notes resonate in my body and my ears, my perception of my self entwines with my friend. I am him and he is me. He is a professional musician, and, at least internally, I giggle with delight in the thought that I am now as musically talented as he is. I feel powerful love and connection for him and me.

Deeper into the experience, I eventually reach a point where I lose all sense of self. Steve disappears. Or, perhaps more accurately, Steve is no longer separate from any other thing. All existence feels connected. We are all the vibrating energy that flows through this body. Through the trees, grass, river, and air. Through the body next to me. Through all of the bodies in the room – and beyond. “Yours” and “mine” no longer have any meaning. Steve is all of these things. I feel this body vibrate powerfully with the energy that surrounds and gives life to all things. It is blissful.

And just as Steve disappears into that blissful oneness, my self awakens, terrified and lost. I breathe through the terror, and can still feel the bliss. Both exist together.

Later, during a haunting call-and-response by two Burundi women sounding like one person,5 I observe a version of myself from above. The version of “me” that I see is pixelated – a sort of “Minecraftian” version of myself, but in three dimensions. Bricks of this self emerge from my body, are shuffled together, then reassemble in constantly-shifting patterns. This “me” is never staying the same.

The next morning, our group convenes for an hour-long session of movement-based meditation, known as “qigong.”6 The night before, after the roughly six-hour LSD session, I had found it difficult to “come back” to my ordinary perception. I eventually recognized that my body was flooded with cortisol – though I felt no anxiety or fear, my body was behaving as if I was having a panic attack. My muscles were taut, my breathing shallow. I was shivering, as if feverish. In the night, once I consciously recognized the symptoms, their intensity immediately subsided. But, even the next morning, I was still “returning.”

But during the movement meditation, I begin to feel myself reconnect with my body, while also strengthening my connection with the Earth and my nine companions. Afterward we sit around a table and eat a big meal for two hours. We take turns sharing our experiences, and how we intend to integrate them into our lives.

Around this large picnic table, these ten men reveal vulnerabilities in ways I had never before experienced among any group of more than two men. We share stories of our brokenness. A former extreme athlete talks about his terrible injury and agonizing physical recovery. Now “healed,” he can no longer participate in the sports that forged a core part of his identity. The lone gay man in the group confesses that it has been decades since he has spent significant time with a group of straight men, and describes how he has faced the anxiety of that experience with us. Others share equally vulnerable stories. There are tears, embraces, and many heartfelt expressions of empathy.

I leave the retreat changed.

Before I describe those changes, I want to name an elephant lingering here – I am an extremely privileged man, and this was an extremely privileged experience. Indeed, I check almost any privileged box you might name in our culture – white, wealthy, cis-gendered, straight, and able-bodied. Many folks couldn’t fly across the country for a weekend retreat. I hope to use my privilege well with the Healing White History project and the reparative work that comes out of it.

I’ve also always been straight-laced. I reached age 56 before I ever consumed any controlled substance. Then, having learned a lot about psychedelics from my brother and from my own research, I asked Adam to guide me through a facilitated psilocybin session. Most of my anxiety issues disappeared when I left the practice of law, but they would still pop up now and again. I hoped that the psychedelic experience might help with that, and it did. Then, a year and a half later, Adam invited me to the retreat.

Finally, I also need to point out that this is my personal account, and in no way medical or spiritual advice. Psychedelics remain illegal in most states, and carry risks. I’m neither doctor, therapist, nor spiritual guru.

For thousands of years, many indigenous cultures around the world have used plants that have psychoactive chemicals as part of their spiritual rituals and growth. In many of those cultures, the people call these psychoactive substances “medicine.” And, after my experience, this label resonates strongly with me.

Upon coming home from that retreat, during my regular four-mile walk, I listen to the music playlist that we heard during our psychedelic experience. I immediately feel an intense connection to my body, the Earth, and to everyone I see. The experience is joyful. I now repeat it every time. Those walks, which had previously been merely exercise, are now my regular spiritual practice – always accompanied by the music we heard during our retreat.

And, after years of thinking about writing a book about my family, upon returning from my retreat I actually began to write it. The words flow. Indeed, they come to me in a torrent. Although I wrote literally millions of words in my career as a lawyer, in those many years my creative process very rarely felt as it did in the months after I returned from the retreat. Ideas, thoughts, and words intruded upon many of my waking moments, and some of my sleeping ones. On at least a handful of occasions I awoke in the middle of my night, as ideas forced their way into my consciousness and urged me to write.

Five months later, I had the first draft of an 80,000 word book manuscript. That manuscript is now on its third draft and still needs lots of work. It’s a year later, and the words no longer flow like they did – writing has gone back to being the grind that it had always been. But the way that manuscript came into being continues to awe me. And the sense it left me – of being called to some bigger purpose – remains.

__

We can’t all attend psychedelic spiritual retreats in the Pacific Northwest. But we can all learn from what many indigenous spiritual traditions offer. We can all try to find more connection. With our own bodies. With the earth. And with each other. In a world where our political leaders continue to manufacture fear and sow hate, I believe that going back to these connections – and cultivating new ones – is the best way to heal ourselves and our communities.

Two weeks ago a friend reached out and said she was planning to start a racial equity book club, and wanted to know if I would like to co-sponsor it with her. Again, the universe reached out. I’m listening.

So, she and I have been scheming. We tentatively plan to call the club “Bodies, Belonging, and Books.” We’ve already worked on the invitation:

We’re forming a small group — part book club, part community, part work, to see how we can meet the challenge of racial equity.

We want to discuss books, starting with Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands. But we also want to build something more: a community with its own culture — one where racial healing and racial justice feel less like obligations and more like a way of life. …

This group is for people ready to move past awareness of white supremacy and jump into healing and action — and willing to be changed by what we read and who we read it with.

We plan to begin with Resmaa Menakem’s practices for healing from racial traumas embedded in all of our bodies. From there, we hope to generate further healing by cultivating both our own culture and new relationships. We want to create our own rituals, making ample room for joy: shared meals, celebration, field trips, growing the kind of belonging that supports the work over the long haul. And we intend to reach out to groups led by People of Color, to try to establish new friendships and learn how we might work together.

Over centuries in this country, we white people have been conditioned to fear Black and brown bodies. To control them. And, as Ta-Nehisi Coates says, “[i]n America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage.”7

President Wilson called Black people a “menace to society.”8 Now President Trump’s website warns of “the real danger Aliens pose to every American family, every community, and the future of our nation.”9

This manufactured fear has buried itself deep in our nervous systems. We are all wounded – Black bodies, brown bodies, and even white and police bodies.

But wounds can heal. We can turn back toward the interconnection that whiteness has taken from us. And someday, we can all become human again.

Last week President Trump mined another nugget from the caverns of America’s racist past, when the White House launched its “Aliens” webpage. Amid UFO-themed art and typography, the page spouts the headline “They Walk Among Us,” then states:

Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods, and interacting with us in our daily lives. … President Trump was the first to call out the real danger Aliens pose to every American family, every community, and the future of our nation.1

For centuries, America’s mythmakers – politicians, historians, novelists, screenwriters, and even so-called scientists – have manufactured racial and ethnic fear to generate law and policy. That fear-driven mythology continues to resonate with many white Americans – and with people of all colors all over the world.

White people have always been afraid of Black and brown people – indeed, such fear was what drove American colonial landowners to create the false story of race in the first place.2 Historically, white fear has manifested not only as violence, but also as grievance – backlash against gains for People of Color to prevent any loss of white wealth and power.

My own ancestors participated in this mythmaking process – my UDC second-great aunts, brainwashing children with “catechisms,” and my third-great grandfather Charley Russell, a slave trader turned racist poet, who called out the “negro-loving Scallawags.”3 But, for the most part, my ancestors were but small cogs in the fear-mongering machine. We need to talk about its designers and the pistons in its engine.

Donald Trump is far from the first American President to use racist lies to manufacture fear-driven popular support for racist policies. Indeed, Woodrow Wilson spread racial fear both in his role as academic historian – Wilson was part of the “Dunning School” of historians who embraced and spread the Lost Cause story – and as President.

In his 1902 five-volume work, A History of the American People, Wilson said “The dominance of an ignorant and inferior race was justly dreaded… It was a menace to society itself that the negroes should thus of a sudden be set free and left without tutelage or restraint.”4

“Menace to society.”

Ninety-one years later, filmmakers Albert and Allen Hughes would use the same words to title their film about the life of young Black men in Los Angeles, trying to escape the cycle of violence. Menace 2 Society inverted Wilson’s lesson, demonstrating that it was society that posed the menace to these young Black men. Although there’s no evidence that the Hughes brothers were inspired by Wilson’s words, they certainly could have been – even if Wilson himself could never have conceived a story that reflects the full humanity of Black people.

But other films captured Wilson’s 1902 lesson in exactly the way he intended.

While Wilson was President, filmmaker D.W. Griffith would use quotes from Wilson’s A History of the American People as title cards in Griffith’s celebrated – and infamously racist – silent film, Birth of a Nation. The film helped launch the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan, and Griffith used Wilson’s praise of the first version of the Klan to help make that happen: “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”5

The plot of Birth of a Nation centers Black men as criminals, incompetent legislators, and threats to the innocence of white women. The heroes of the story are the Klansmen who dole out vigilante “justice.”

This fear-mongering proved both effective and persistent. Between Reconstruction and World War II, white people lynched more than 4,400 Black men.6 Over recent decades, white mythmakers have channeled racial fear into the policies supporting mass incarceration. Mythmakers and policymakers in this country have worked for decades to keep Black folks “in their place.”

Racial fear-mongering has extended well beyond politics and film. In the early 20th century, the so-called science of eugenics emerged, growing out of 19th century racial pseudoscience such as craniometry and phrenology. In 1924, relying on extensive testimony from eugenicists, Congress passed harsh quotas to limit the number of Jews and Italians entering the United States, and excluded Asians completely.7 When he signed the new act into law, President Calvin Coolidge said “America must remain American.”8

A decade later, Adolf Hitler seized on the work of American eugenicist Madison Grant as “my Bible.”9

The story of American eugenics eventually leads us back to where we are today – with authoritarian political leaders in not only the United States but across the world, all manufacturing ethnic and racial fear to consolidate popular support for their dictatorships. Today, that global factory cranks out fear in the form of the “Great Replacement Theory”: the false story that immigrants are “invading” nations to “replace” its people, in order to steal their jobs, wealth, and culture. In some versions of this fiction, the threat of “replacement” also stems from LGBTQIA+ people, feminists, and advocates for multiculturalism.10

In Strangers in Their Own Land,11 sociologist Dr. Arlie Hochschild describes the worldview that allows this conspiracy “replacement” theory to resonate. Dr. Hochschild talked for years with members of the Tea Party movement in Louisiana. She said that these Tea Party members saw themselves as waiting patiently in line to achieve the American Dream, working harder toward the promise of economic success and greater upward mobility than past generations — and then a new set of people begin to “cut the line.” This group of “line-cutters” include People of Color, women, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, facilitated by the government through affirmative action and welfare.12

This white anger at perceived line-cutting has emerged across the globe. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi spotlights Replacement Theory in his recent book Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age. Dr. Kendi is a historian and professor whose books about the history of race and anti-racism – including Stamped From the Beginning and How To Be an Anti-Racist – have educated and inspired millions of adults and children.

In Chain of Ideas, Kendi describes how political leaders across the world have embraced Replacement Theory, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin, to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and many others.13 Some of these leaders have risen to control their national governments on the winds of fear, and all of them have drawn strong popular support.

Support for “Great Replacement Theory” flourishes across the world despite being rejected by widespread consensus among historians, social science experts in population data, and sociologists. For example, in The Great Demographic Illusion,14 sociologist Dr. Richard Alba debunks the claim that “inevitable demographic changes will create a society with a majority made up of minorities for the first time in the United States’s history.” Instead, Alba shows that America is becoming more ethno-racially mixed, and how that trend is likely to continue. White people aren’t disappearing. Rather, they are marrying people of other races and ethnicities and producing mixed-race/ethnicity children.

Demographer Dr. Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division, rejects replacement theory more pointedly:

Promoted by racist, antisemitic, xenophobic and white supremacist groups and spread by some media outlets, the great replacement is a conspiracy theory about changes in the composition of America’s population.15

But facts alone cannot extinguish fear and anger. And politicians – here in the U.S. and elsewhere – continue to use this counter-factual emotional trigger to build support for their authoritarian regimes.

On May 11, the U.S. State Department posted: “The United States objects to the Global Compact on Migration and UN efforts to facilitate replacement migration to the United States and our Western allies... Under President Trump, the State Department will facilitate remigration – not replacement migration.”16 This language sends the explicit message that our federal government endorses the “Great Replacement Theory.”17 The wolves are now free to roam.

At the same time our U.S. Supreme Court supports racial hierarchy under the guise of neutral “color blind” policy, our presidential administration signals that open racism once again has the imprimatur of government.

Last week I saw this play out on my own social media, after posting a video about my third-great grandfather’s poem “The Scallawag,” and then drawing a through line of racial grievance to the decision of the Supreme Court in Callais, eviscerating the Voting Rights Act.18 I knew that discussing race on social media would draw hateful comments. But one commenter’s 400-word screed still managed to shock me with its brazen embrace of white supremacy. I reported the comment as hateful to Facebook (after review, Facebook decided to do nothing about it), and hid it from public view. I’m posting a fragment of it below to give you a sense of where some Americans stand [Note: the following quote contains explicit white supremacist hate speech]:

They [Black people] have no grip or emotional control and are the most jealous creatures on earth. … their minds are still stuck on the plantation. They haven’t accomplished anything in the last 100 years …. They hate white people but as soon as they get a dollar, they force themselves into white schools and neighborhoods and anywhere white people go. They destroy everything they have with their degenerate behavior. They love to hurt people and are dangerous just to be around.

Unfortunately, Great Replacement Theory often spurs more than brazen words. From 2011 to 2022, five mass shooters – in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh – left manifestos defending their behavior as a defense against white “genocide.”19

So what do we do now? We know facts alone rarely penetrate such calcified hatred, so what tools might actually work?

As always, I recognize that there are no easy answers. And no single approach will solve the crisis. But I think a friend of my brother gives us a starting point: he says that “all problems are ‘consciousness’ problems.” Or, as Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé says, “the indigenous world and its wisdom might heal many of the spiritual and emotional problems from which Western civilization suffers.”20 Next week, I’ll explore what I think that means, and how it might point us all in the right direction.

We live in a time of white grievance against Black progress. And, in this country, we always have.

In 1866, before the Military Reconstruction Acts, my third-great grandfather, Charley Russell (the “Slave Trader in My Family Tree”)1 was elected as county judge in Karnes County, Texas.2 But soon after, federal military rule meant that Charley lost his position to the “carpetbaggers.” In response, Charley wrote a poem, called “The Scallawag”3:

As soon as on our shores they land,

With empty purse and clad in rags,

They take the NEGRO by the hand, to elevate – the SCALLAWAGS!

These negro-loving Scallawags,

These self-improving Scallawags,

These jeering, peering, Ku Klux-fearing, eyeglass-wearing Scallawags.

Charley’s poem has other verses, but you get the gist.

Charley proudly flaunted his contempt for Black folks and their white supporters. But, as Malcolm X described almost 100 years later, throughout American history racially-aggrieved white folks have often disguised those grievances as empathy or support:

That white person that you see calling himself a “liberal” is the most dangerous thing in the entire Western hemisphere. He’s the most deceitful. He’s like a fox, and a fox is always more dangerous in the forest than the wolf. You can see the wolf coming. You know what he’s up to. But the fox will fool you.4

Charley was a wolf. For more than 150 years, white leadership, whether “liberal” or “conservative,” have often been foxes.

Even today’s primary mechanism for eviscerating Black political power – legislative redistricting – has a long, sordid, “foxy” history. In his 1964 “Ballot or the Bullet” speech, Malcolm X first told the crowd that “You, today, are in the hands of a government of [southern] segregationists, racists, white supremacists, who belong to the Democratic Party.”5 Then, Malcolm moved on to northern white Democrats:

Up here in the North, you have the same thing. The Democratic Party don’t do it, they don’t do it that way. They got a thing that they call gerrymandering. They maneuver you out of power. Even though you can vote, they fix it so you’re voting for nobody. They got you going and coming. In the South, they’re outright political wolves. In the North, they’re political foxes.6

In Louisiana v. Callais, our current Supreme Court told Americans that the protections of the Voting Rights Act are no longer necessary:

[T]he Voting Rights Act led to “great strides” in the ensuing decades: “voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers.”7

The Court had begun unwinding the Voting Rights Act thirteen years earlier, in Shelby County v. Holder, citing this historical progress. But, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in her dissenting opinion in Shelby County, “[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”8

The Supreme Court’s decisions gutting the Voting Rights Act in both Shelby County and Callais illustrate how white “foxes” have blocked racial progress: the Court congratulates Black folks for how far they have come, and uses that as an excuse to pull them back toward their “rightful place.”

The reasoning in Callais and Shelby County echoes the words of the Reconstruction-era Supreme Court, which often rolled back civil rights that Congress had provided Black folks. In 1883, for example, the Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal treatment for Black people in public accommodations, transportation, and jury service. It said:

When a man has emerged from slavery, and, by the aid of beneficent legislation, has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen or a man are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected.9

One hundred and forty-three years later, the white foxes in black robes are still pulling the same trick.

This 19th century reasoning is built on the false story of white superiority. Black folks flourished during Reconstruction – as politicians, educators, artists, and free people. But “Lost Cause” academic historians of the “Dunning School” characterized Reconstruction as a failure. One scholar summarizes the Dunning viewpoint this way:

The freedmen, by reason of their inferiority, were not only inept in their political and vocational ventures but also peculiarly vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous whites... The Negroes themselves, confounding liberty with license, poisoned the social and political life of the South through their irresponsible exercise of freedom.10

And so, we learn again that “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”11 We need to understand the emotional source for this historical pattern, so we can break it.

Whether dressed as “wolf” or “fox,” white backlash against Black progress has always been about racial grievance – the zero-sum fear that any gains for Black folks necessarily translate to losses for white people.

Last week, I met a white man who asked me about my work on Healing White History. I explained that my imagined conversations with my ancestors had transformed me, and that I hoped other white folks could also be inspired by this process to work with People of Color to fix the racial mess we are in.

He then asked, “Why would People of Color want to change it?” For this man, the entire story of race and racism is upside down – he believes that race only works to keep white people like him down, while People of Color are unfairly granted jobs, educational opportunities, and other privileges that white folks should be getting instead. My great-great-great grandfather would have immediately bonded with him.

Here’s the thing for me and my white readers now. We can’t just respond to stories like this by shaking our heads and congratulating ourselves that we’re the “right kind of white people.” We need to act. We need to get in community and relationship with People of Color who are working on fixing the real mess. We need to put our heads down, listen, and work. And we need to use joy – both in our existing relationships and in our new ones – to sustain us. That joy will help us resist the temptation of abandoning the work and retreating to our comfortable lives. We can shed the fox skin that has betrayed and abandoned People of Color historically.

Built in 1851, the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery served as the Confederacy’s first capital – Jefferson Davis delivered his inaugural address as President there in February 1861. In January 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace stood on the steps of the building and proudly proclaimed, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. And segregation forever!”

The All Roads Lead to the South Rally

On Saturday, I stood with 5,000 mostly Black folks in front of those same steps, joining in their furious response: “We’re not going back!”

In the immediate aftermath of last month’s Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Republican-dominated state legislatures in Alabama and across the South have responded by drawing new lines to eliminate Black political power. Lines that violated the Voting Rights Act until just a few weeks ago.

But in Montgomery on Saturday, Black Americans signaled that, as ever, they would rise for the fight. And, “when we fight … WE WIN!”

In the city that Gov. Wallace called the “cradle of the Confederacy,” our current Black civil rights leaders led thousands as they declared that they would honor their own ancestors, whose tireless work in the Civil Rights Movement led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other landmark protections of Black autonomy and power.

The mayors of both Montgomery and Birmingham reminded us of this history on Saturday.

Montgomery mayor Steven Reed said, “We are here in this city because of the spirit, the courage, and the commitment of our forefathers and foremothers, who brought us to this point, [where we have] the most multiracial, multicultural, multigenerational America that exists. We will not be silenced because of a select few that want to take us back.”1

Likewise, Mayor Randall Woodfin evoked the Children’s Crusade of 1963 in his city of Birmingham: “Let’s remember we are descendants of real foot soldiers. Some of them, at the age of 10,11, and 12, were not afraid of dogs and not afraid of fire hoses,” Woodfin said. “We have to remember who we are.”2

Saturday’s rally calls echoed on the same streets where tens of thousands followed the lead of people like Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks, and Dr. King in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For more than a year in 1955 and 1956, Black folks walked, biked, carpooled, and struggled, until they won the right to sit where they wanted on the city’s bus system.

The sun was hot, and everyone in that space felt and understood the gravity of the task facing them. But the Black folks in Montgomery on Saturday did what their ancestors have done for centuries. They blasted joyful music. They sang prayerful anthems, and chanted powerful messages in the call and response style brought here by their ancestors.

“We aren’t going back!”

“When we fight … WE WIN!”

“No justice … NO PEACE!”

I learned a lot on Saturday afternoon. But Montgomery had taught me even more in the preceding 24 hours.

The Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum

In addition to its Confederate and civil rights history, today Montgomery is home to the Equal Justice Initiative (“EJI”), and its four Legacy Sites.3

So when my former law partner, Al Stewart, invited me on Thursday morning to travel to Montgomery with him for the All Roads Lead to the South rally, I jumped at the chance. We hopped on airplanes on Friday, and joined the rally from the start on Saturday afternoon.

But Saturday morning was for the EJI’s Legacy Museum.

We enter the museum into a relatively small room, where we hear crashing waves break against the sand as we read about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade:

Between 1501 and 1867, nearly 13 million African people were kidnapped, forced onto European and American ships, and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved, abused, and forever separated from their homes, families, ancestors, and cultures.4

From there, we walk into the next room, where we reach the beach. The waves roar louder. But, in my head, silent cries of human anguish overwhelm the sounds of the waves. On both sides of me, I see sculptures of living people buried to the neck in the sand. They are survivors of the Middle Passage – journeys of 4,000 to 7,000 miles, lasting three to 12 weeks. Kidnapped, bound in chains to dozens of others, and crammed into filthy holds of ships. Forever ripped from family, home, and culture. Starvation, disease and heartbreak killed nearly 2 million people on that passage.

But part of me feels that those 2 million were fortunate compared to the survivors I now see washed onto this beach.

Their faces show the depth of loss through different emotional lenses. Some are stoic children, shocked into numbness. Some are steely-eyed and determined to survive. To overcome. But most are simply agonized. I cannot comprehend the depth of their pain and loss.5

Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo created this installation at the Legacy Museum from his broader collection of figurative sculptures dedicated to honoring enslaved African ancestors.6 The title of the installation, “Nkyinkyim” roughly translates to “twisting.” The name evokes the twists and turns during life’s journey, “emphasizing initiative, dynamism, versatility, and the need to adapt and be resilient in the face of challenges.7

How perfect.

Two hours later, Al and I emerge from the museum. We set a two hour stop time because I knew it would hit us hard, and we needed to recover in time for the rally.

I ask for Al’s thoughts.

“Beautiful and terrible.”

Of all the exhibits he saw (which was only about half the museum), the “Nkyinkyim” installation at the very beginning hit Al the hardest. For him, the sculptures were a perfect expression of truth, using divine gifts of skill to evoke connection. And that was his big takeaway from the museum as a whole.

Al is a trial lawyer – and a gifted storyteller. For Al, talent combined with truth telling through symbols and stories is “a powerful reminder of how God speaks to everyone about true righteousness – the call to love one another as equals, as family.”

The Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and the other EJI Legacy sites in Montgomery are filled with terrible truths, beautifully communicated. Those sites provide an extraordinary opportunity for white folks like me to take ownership of the story of race.

For some, that connection might come from the haunting faces on the beach in the Nyinkyim installation. For others, it could be raw data visualized in a new way. After leaving the heart-rending sculptures, museum visitors go next into a room where they watch animations of a map showing the Trans-Atlantic slave trade over time. You see the tally rise over time – as enslaved people land in different cities up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

The Legacy Museum is filled with videos, sculptures, photos, written history, visualized timelines, animations, and exhibits. They each provide a different pathway to connect the audience emotionally to the story.

On Friday I visited the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, one of the other Legacy sites in Montgomery. There I found a different visual that illustrates the horrifying scope of human loss, and its connection to me.

Photos tell this story far better than my words.

Below is a photo showing part of the National Monument to Freedom – a huge, 43-foot orange wall, which lists 122,000 surnames chosen by freed men and women after the Civil War, listed in the 1870 census. Each name appears once on the wall. This photo gives you scale. Enlarge it so you can see the person stooping to look.

I walked up to only one tiny section of the wall to look at names. I would guess I read a few hundred names out of 122,000. I was not looking for any name in particular. But this name found me.

My name is Steve Baughman Jensen. I was born Steven Robert Baughman. For the first 10 years after we married, Rebecca and I simply kept our own last names. But, when she got pregnant, we decided to adopt a new family name. We chose “Jensen” because it had been her great-grandfather’s name when he left Denmark. When he came here, an immigration officer changed it to “Johnson.”

My Healing White History work has focused on my maternal ancestral connections – people with names like Russell and Atkinson. But on Friday I received a message that I need to look much harder at my paternal heritage as well.

Powerful connections await you in Montgomery. Connections that can help us white folks take ownership of the story of race, so that we can break the historical pattern. We don’t have to keep being the weak link.

On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court issued Louisiana v. Callais, gutting the Voting Rights Act. Eight days later in Tennessee, the legislature wiped out the only Black majority district in the State – in Memphis, a Black majority city.

Galveston, Texas 1904: The United Daughters of the Confederacy’s Catechism for Children:

[13] How were the slaves treated?

With great kindness and care in nearly all cases, a cruel master being rare, and lost the respect of his neighbors if he treated his slaves badly. Self interest would have prompted good treatment if a higher feeling of humanity had not.

[14] What was the feeling of the slaves towards their masters?

They were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them.1

My great grandaunt, Alice Atkinson Neighbors (1889-1966), worked for the UDC when it taught that catechism to school children. I can hear her voice now:

“Whites and Negroes got along just fine until the Yankees started meddling.”

In Callais, the Supreme Court tells us that “Black voters are doing just fine, and it’s time the legal system stops meddling with the votes.”

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White progressive folks, this is where wealth and power expect despair to disable you. But we do not have to continue to be the weak link in the battle for racial justice.

Take another deep breath. Locate another dose of courage. Bring along your joy to help sustain all of us. Get ready to make some new friends across racial lines. It’s finally time for us white allies to take ownership of the story of race and what it has wrought. Let’s break the pattern and get back to work.

A Quick Practical Primer on What the Supreme Court Has Wrought

To find a solution, we first need to understand the problem. The decision in Callais v. Louisiana creates several huge ones.

First, from here on out, we know that it’s going to be nearly impossible to show that partisan gerrymandering violates the Voting Rights Act, unless the districts are explicitly created to help Black and brown people gain representation.

For decades, violations of the Voting Rights Act have been proven by showing that districting schemes have a racially discriminatory impact. Now, any such impact is meaningless unless the Court finds that the plan was intended to racially discriminate. Proving discriminatory intent is extremely difficult. Think of Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise) getting Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson) to admit on cross-examination that he ordered the “Code Red” in A Few Good Men. It makes for great drama. But it basically never happens in real life. The Supreme Court has told us that we can’t handle the truth – unless, of course, the districting lines were explicitly drawn for racial reasons in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which was exactly the situation in Callais.

The decision is only two weeks old, and legislatures across the South are already scrambling to dilute Black votes in time for this year’s midterm elections.

“White supremacy is codifying itself in the State of Tennessee and all across the nation. This isn’t coincidental or accidental. They’re coming for Black political power in Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana. We’re seeing the greatest purge of Black power since the era of Reconstruction.”

- Justin J. Pearson, TN state representative2

But Congressional districts are not the only problem.

At the local level, most counties, municipalities, and school boards have single-member districts, which allow for representation of racial minorities from areas where many people of their race live. At-large districts, by contrast, are elected by a majority of the entire electorate in the jurisdiction – the whole city, county, or school district. If you have a white majority in the community, then it’s easy for an all-white city council to be elected, even in a community that may have up to 49% racial minorities.

For decades, the Voting Rights Act has prevented at-large districts from being used to discriminate against racial minorities, based on the discriminatory impact standard. In my home of Dallas, for example, white folks dominated control of the city up until 1991. A long series of lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act finally forced the change to single-member districts.

Because white folks are no longer the majority in Dallas, it’s not likely that the city will now shift back to at-large districts any time soon. But other cities around the country almost inevitably will. Whenever that happens, People of Color are likely to be frozen out of representation in majority-white communities.

Finally, the Callais decision is exactly the weaponization of “color blindness” that I’ve been talking about over the last month. As I wrote four weeks ago, “Race is a false story that continues to create dramatic social realities. Recognizing those realities is not racism. It is the only available path to repairing what has been broken.”3

You need to understand that the Supreme Court’s constitutional analysis in Callais makes it far more difficult for Congress to fix the problem by creating a new version of the Voting Rights Act. According to the Court, the way the Voting Rights Act has been applied for decades – to strike down districting schemes based on racially discriminatory impact alone – is actually a violation of constitutional Equal Protection rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. This means that Congress cannot fix the problem by amending the statute in a way that implements race-conscious remedies for redistricting that causes racially discriminatory impacts.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Supreme Court just threw out a redistricting map that voters had approved, which would have added up to four new Democratic districts.

Can you hear my UDC aunts laughing, or is that just me?

So, in a nutshell, those are the problems we face. They are very, very bad. But they are not insurmountable.

White allies cannot come to this work to be heroes of anything. But we can show up to be accountable, and to stop being the weak link that allows wealth and power to keep racial hierarchy in place.

Here’s one path toward that accountability.

Strap in for the Long Haul

I have a confession.

Last week, I had a plan:

1. win both the House and Senate in midterms, then

2. reform the filibuster process in the Senate, paving the way to

3. pass a new version of the federal “Freedom to Vote Act,” which would outlaw partisan gerrymandering, and could lead to

4. other potential voting rights reforms, such as ranked choice voting.

I had it all figured out. How white of me.

This week, 2,000 words into a draft of this essay, reality finally hit me. Some day Congress may (and I believe will) again pass meaningful voting rights reform, but it damned sure won’t happen in 2027 because Donald Trump will still be president. Trump will veto any bill that reinstates meaningful voting rights for Black and brown folks.

The earliest point at which anything like the Freedom to Vote Act could become federal law is in 2029, when we hope to have a different president from a different party.

Which means we are in for a very long haul. I believe that we will need to push for something similar to the legislative path I outline above: win the House, Senate, and the White House. Modify the filibuster, which has long worked as a powerful tool for maintaining racial hierarchy. Then pass meaningful voting rights reform, which must include a proscription against partisan gerrymandering.

But that’s a long way off. This is when the weak link has often broken – the point of easy despair. How can we avoid repeating that pattern?

Taking Ownership of the Story of Race

We white folks need to internalize the reality that this racial mess is our problem. Individually, none of us created racial hierarchy or the systems that still uphold it. But we have all benefited from it. And our ancestors helped to build and expand it. By doing nothing, we choose to keep it in place.

The Healing White History project exists because the experience of holding imagined conversations with my racist ancestors made me feel like race was my problem in a far more visceral and powerful way. I believe what worked for me might also work for you, which is why I built the Framework for Healing Your Own White History.4 But I realize that, for many of you, that path won’t resonate. And you need to find some other way to get there. If history doesn’t do it, maybe working a shift at a homeless shelter will. Or visiting a Black church. Maybe watching Ava DuVernay’s masterpiece of a documentary, 13th. Or maybe it’s revisiting your own values and how they call you toward racial justice. Find a way, whatever it is. Otherwise, we will repeat history.

We Need to Undertake Local Racial Repair

As part of taking ownership, I also believe that we, the white allies, should be stepping into the work of racial repair, if we haven’t already. Step Seven in my own seven-step framework is repair. And that has to mean more than just feeling better about yourself and your ancestors. It means making material changes in the world that address racial harms that our ancestors helped to create. This can mean everything from advocating for broad reparations programs from federal, state, or local governments, to redistributing resources from individuals and families, to institutional reparations that fall somewhere in between.

In all candor, I’m only at the very beginning of my own work on racial repair. I’m no expert, and I know I have a lot to learn. But, I’m moving forward.

I believe that my work on this project is part of my repair work, although it does not directly create material change in the world. This project has been my full-time job for the last year. I’ve also spent thousands of dollars on a creativity coach, a racial sensitivity reader, a marketing guru, and Facebook advertising for subscribers to this Substack. Of course, all of that time and money is not just reparative – it also helps my own ambitions as a writer. But, I’ve also committed that any net royalties from publication of my book will go toward reparations.

In December, Rebecca and I redistributed $60,000 to help fund a Director of Equity Initiatives position at our church. A small group of my cousins, my brother, Rebecca, and I have been meeting regularly to discuss our own individual and collective paths toward racial repair – and to hold each other accountable to stay with the work. Rebecca and I have committed another $40,000 to help fund whatever collective family action we eventually take. And, I’m in the initial stages of developing an institutional racial reparations project for our church and broader community.

Please note that your own reparations path will inevitably be different from mine. You have a different ancestral history, different resources, and different strengths. Figure out your own strengths and how they fit in this work.

In many ways, this work falls well outside my wheelhouse. I know that just as this journey can’t be confined to psychological and spiritual healing, you also can’t do it by pulling out the checkbook and walking away. The reparations process requires building relationships with People of Color, who must direct where money and resources need to flow.

Last week I attended a virtual panel about reparations hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Association. The panelists included several folks who had worked on the groundbreaking municipal racial reparations program enacted by the city of Evanston, Illinois. Every person on that panel emphasized that there are “no shortcuts” to creating genuine, long-term relationships across racial lines. History has taught People of Color to mistrust us white allies. Overcoming that history to earn new trust is a very long road. And it is an essential step in the reparations process.

I am an introvert. I love my friends, but I’m not too excited about the prospect of trying to make new ones.

I also know that I am highly conditioned by dominant culture.5 I have perfectionist tendencies. I often feel the need for urgent action when more discussion and contemplation should be called for. And I typically default to the mythologies of individualism and meritocracy. All of this conditioning makes me likely to create lots of harm in my white cultural wake as I step into racial equity work – and especially reparations.

But I remain committed to overcoming my weaknesses to do this work. I know I will make mistakes. I know I will be uncomfortable. And I’m ready for that. So our church will be reaching out to Black churches and other Black-led organizations. We will foster multi-racial relationships. And I will be there to make friends at the same time I make mistakes.

And the path of repair certainly requires finding joy along the way. White Americans oppose reparations. Convincing them otherwise is an uphill battle waged against long odds. Despair will come for us repeatedly along the way, and joy can be our magical shield. I’m ready to find it – not only with family and friends that I already have – but also in new relationships I’m committed to build.

There’s barbecue to eat, pies to make, songs to be sung, and (in my case, bad) dancing to be done. People of Color know how to make joy work to create resilience in the fight for liberation. We need to learn from them, and join them in joy as well.

We literally owe People of Color to do this work. To step outside our comfort zones. To find the resilience that will break historical patterns. To pay the debt. And to become the ancestors we wish that we had.

“I believe that injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. I think hopelessness is the enemy of justice.”

• Bryan Stevenson (2024)1

Like many of you, I have despaired at last week’s Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act.

I have also imagined the cackling delight that my own ancestors would take in taunting me about it. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy refuses to die.

This one cuts deep.

We must understand that the Voting Rights Act was not merely about ensuring Black Americans rights, it was about democratizing America. This ruling is not just a decimation of Black rights and Black Americans’ ability to have representation, it is a fatal blow to multiracial democracy.

• Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project2

White friends, it’s time to take a deep breath. Gather your courage. Find your joy. And get back to work. “Despair is politically useful to unjust systems because despair persuades people to accept cruelty as permanent.”3

This is not a new story. Every time Black and brown people have stepped forward, white power and wealth have pushed back. And each time, it’s been us – the progressive white “allies” for racial justice – who have been the weak link that allowed it. Not out of spite, or even complacency. Mostly, white allies have let gains slip away because they were tired, they despaired, and they failed to recognize racist systems disguised as public policy.

White wealth and power have never stopped fighting to keep their plunder. And Black and brown folks have never stopped fighting to survive.

But we, the white “allies,” have not been able to hold the line. The same systems of injustice that allies have worked to dismantle also incentivize them to give up — or never start working in the first place. Let’s review the evidence.

Reconstruction: A “Brief Moment in the Sun”

During Reconstruction, Black people thrived.

Black men were granted voting rights and were elected to political offices including seats in the U.S. Congress, Black families acquired land and started farms, and communities built churches and schools.4

But the backlash came quickly. Angry Confederates responded with “violence ranging from unlawful incarceration and voter intimidation to lynching and mass shootings.”5 For 12 years after the war, white progressives in the Republican Party continued to fight to win and protect the rights of Black freedmen against this violent backlash. Federal troops remained in the South, arresting Klansmen, preserving order, and enforcing the new civil rights laws.

But in 1876, while his presidential election was being contested, Republican Rutherford Hayes struck a deal with Southern Democrats: to prevent them from blocking the electoral votes he needed for inauguration, he promised to withdraw the remaining federal troops from the South. Thus, the progressive white folks won the Presidency, and gave up on Black people in the South.

We know too well what happened next – lynching, Black codes, convict leasing, poll taxes, and then Jim Crow. Between 1870 and 1901, 22 Black men served in Congress. And then there were none. As Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois put it, “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery.”6

After the Civil Rights Movement: the War on Crime and Mass Incarceration

Although I’ll be adding a third racial backlash in a moment, the reality is that we continue to live in this second one.

Black folks won enormous progress after decades of toil during the Civil Rights Movement. Progressive white folks contributed to the cause. But they did even more to hold it back.

Even while the Movement was gaining momentum, in his Letter from Birmingham Dr. King described how the lack of commitment from white people posed a huge obstacle for racial justice:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice … Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.7

For decades, the lukewarm acceptance of white moderates meant that Black folks kept losing. And still, led by Dr. King and less celebrated heroes like Fannie Lou Hamer, they persevered.8 Eventually, they won. The crown jewel in that victory was the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But after the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, it did not take long for wealth and power to push back. In 1968, Richard Nixon ran for President on the platform of “restoring law and order.” Once in office, Nixon launched an all-out “War on Crime.” Years later, Nixon’s aide John Ehrlichman would explain this political strategy:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White house after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.9

Nixon’s “War on Crime” became Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” then peaked with Clinton’s “Three Strikes.” All of it was racial hierarchy coded as legal “reform.”

The result is America’s notorious system of mass incarceration – “the New Jim Crow.” “Nearly two million people, disproportionately Black, are living in prisons and jails instead of their communities. This contrasts sharply with the early 1970s, when this number was 360,000.”10

This backlash after the hard-won victories of the Civil Rights Movement happened because liberal Democrats fell for the trick – “criminals” became code for race, and white progressives like Bill Clinton (and most of us who voted for him) fell for the bait. Clinton’s 1994 federal sentencing guidelines were ridiculously racist. These “three strikes” mandatory guidelines forced federal judges to imprison tens of thousands of people for minor possession charges. And most of the people serving those sentences were Black and brown. States around the country adopted similar sentencing standards, and mass incarceration exploded.

After George Floyd: From “Racial Reckoning” to Wrecking Civil Rights

And that brings us to the current backlash. We all watched the video of Derek Chauvin grinding his knee on the neck of George Floyd over an agonizing 9 minutes and 29 seconds. This reawakened the racial empathy of white Americans that systems of wealth and power had coaxed to sleep. Through a pandemic, we rallied through 2020’s “Summer of Racial Reckoning.” We demanded systemic reform – or even the outright abolition of current systems of policing. Corporations made bold promises, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs proliferated across all types of American institutions.

But then came MAGA. White Democrats have struggled to understand, much less respond, to this authoritarian shift in power. Black and brown folks have seen it all before, and knew it was coming. They just didn’t have the power to stop it, without the full buy-in of clueless white allies like me. Folks who believed Trump would never win. Folks who thought our courts would protect us.

In 2016, registered Democratic voters were more likely to stay home than registered Republicans. Some of that failed Democratic turnout happened in key states, including Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin.11 According to post-election polling, if both Republicans and Democrats had turned out at the same rate, Hillary Clinton would have been President.12 In addition to low voter turnout, about 1.5 million voters – overwhelmingly white progressive folks – chose to vote for third party candidate Jill Stein.

I remember one of my Black friends pleading with white people on Facebook during the 2016 campaign: “Y’all better go get your cousins.” I didn’t do that. Neither did the rest of us. If white “allies” had just listened to Black voices, Trump would never have won.13

In Trump’s first term, he appointed three Supreme Court justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Callais was a 6-3 decision in which all three of those justices were in the majority. Complacency from white progressives allowed wealth and power to snatch back the victory that people like Fannie Lou Hamer worked so hard to win.

This post-2020 backlash has been gaining momentum for years, at the same time white Americans’ support for racial justice has waned. Texas and other Republican states outlawed both DEI programs and teaching the truth to children about our country’s racial history. Then, once Trump started his second term and issued threats, corporations stampeded away from DEI.

White progressives have been the weak link because we have never taken ownership of the problem of unwinding the false stories of race and white superiority. I lived most of my life sympathetic with People of Color about racial discrimination. I believed I was an “ally.” But, in my core, I also believed race was somebody else’s problem. So long as white folks continue to believe that, we will continue to retreat from the cause at the first signs of despair, and we will be tricked into complacency whenever it’s comfortable and convenient.14

And so today we live with the horrors of ICE and Border Patrol stealing brown people away, and murdering with impunity those like Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who dare to stand against them.

And we must also – somehow – live with the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

This work is hard. Despair is easy, as is settling back into our comfortable white lives. Historically, this is what we have eventually done. That’s how the white wealth and power backlashes have been able to unwind racial justice progress.

But we don’t have to fall into that same pattern. A path forward exists. We don’t have to continue to be the weak link. Next week we’ll talk about what Callais has broken, and how we can work together to fix it.

“When I look into your eyes, I see myself. I am you. … when I share what little I have with you … I love you, and I love myself too.”

• Refiloe Moahloli, I Am You: A Book About Ubuntu (2020)

“She could not bear the good qualities of this pretty girl, and the less because they made her own daughters appear the more odious.”

• Charles Perrault, Cinderella (1697)1

This week I bought books for my grandchildren. Stories and proverbs illustrating and celebrating different cultures and traditions from across Africa. Let me share some of them with you.

Some African Children’s Stories and Proverbs

I’ll See You in Ijebu2

The narrator is a Catholic child – born to an American father, but living in Lagos, Nigeria. She travels with her family to Ijebu, to celebrate Ọdún ilé yá – or Eid al-Adha – with her mother’s Muslim family. After a two-hour car journey, the children squeal with delight upon first sight of their grandparents’ home.

On the front porch, their Baba awaits, chanting the narrator’s special Yoruba greeting – her oríkì: “Olubunmi! My gift from God! Daughter of Akinpelumi! Descendant of Asemperi! Born of Ondo soil! My American child!”

Throughout the visit, Olubunmi savors delicious food, helps cook the feast with her grandmother, and walks to the mosque for prayers with her siblings, wearing matching, brightly-colored Eid outfits. “We look like family!” She exults.

“Some mouths open wide for holy communion. Some mouths chew Sallah meat. One family, many beliefs. The beauty of faith, tradition, and love.”

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Sulwe3

From across the continent in Kenya, actor Lupita Nyong’o tells the story of a young Luo girl, shamed because her skin is much darker than the skin of her family and classmates. She struggles.

Sulwe tries brushing the color from her skin, disguising it with makeup, and eating a bland diet of all-white foods. She is despondent, but her mother reassures that “Brightness is not in your skin, my love. Brightness is just who you are.”

This makes Sulwe sigh. “How could she have beauty when no one but her mother seemed to see it?”

Inspired by Luo cosmology, Nyong’o creates a new myth to heal her hero. Sulwe’s name means star, and that night a star visits her, transporting Sulwe across the sky while telling the tale of the sisters Day and Night. The two sisters loved each other very much, but people treated them differently. Day was called “Lovely,” “Nice,” and “Pretty.” Night was “Scary,” “Bad,” and “Ugly.”

“Night got fed up and walked right off the earth.”

When Night leaves, the people soon miss her. Day seeks her out. Night tells her “you don’t know what it’s like to be treated badly for being dark.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Day replied. “But what I do know is that we need you just the way you are.”

Night returns to earth, and the people rejoice. “We need the darkest night to get the deepest rest. We need you so that we can grow and dream and keep our secrets to ourselves.”

Day tells her sister, “When you are darkest is when you are most beautiful. It’s when you are most you.”

“They were inseparable from that moment on, and promised to celebrate the brightness in each other, whether people chose to see it or not.”

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African Proverbs for All Ages4

Johnnetta Betsch Cole, PhD and Nelda LaTeef gathered proverbs from across African cultures. They write that “We shortchange our children when we assume they are incapable of understanding metaphor and deeper meaning. There are multiple ways that children learn, but for each method by which they learn, they need their imaginations engaged and their visual sensibilities ignited.”

Here are a few examples:

“Many hands make light work.” Tanzania.

“When spiderwebs unite, they can tie up a lion.” Ethiopia.

“Return to old watering holes for more than water: friends and dreams are there to meet you.” Africa.

“If you wait long enough, even an egg will walk.” Ethiopia.

“Patience is bitter, but it bears sweet fruit.” Africa.

“Nobody is born wise.” Africa.

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I Am You: A Book About Ubuntu5

Author Refiloe Moahloli poetically illustrates the southern African belief of Ubuntu – the idea that we are all connected. The publisher notes that “Ubuntu means ‘I am, because you are.’ The word ubuntu comes from the Nguni languages of isiZulu and isiXhosa and embodies the idea that a person is a person through other people.”

Moahloli’s poem starts, “When I look into your eyes, I see myself. I am you.” She continues, “When I hug you as I say hello… when I share what little I have with you… and when I walk home with you after school … I love you, and I love myself too.”

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We have the power to change the false stories of race and white superiority. We can rewrite our culture with stories that connect us. That heal us.

I grew up with proverbs and stories very different from these.

The Role of Western Fairy Tales

Even before America elevated individualism, perfectionism, paternalism, and meritocracy through mythologies like the frontier Western,6 the European forebears of white culture laid the foundation for these mythologies with fairy tales.

Cinderella provides a classic example. This ancient story probably originates from the Greek/Egyptian tale of Rhodopis, a slave girl whose shoe is stolen and brought to a king.7 In 1697, French author Charles Perrault created the version that has been Disneyfied and firmly planted in the American cultural psyche. Perrault’s moral teachings crystallize the contrast with the African stories above:

The story opens: “a young daughter, of rare goodness and sweetness of temper, which she took from her mother, who was the best creature in the world.”8 Goodness is a gift with which we are born (or not), rather than something that can be learned.

Next, “She [the stepmother] could not bear the goodness of this young girl, because it made her own daughters appear the more odious.” Goodness and other virtues are zero-sum commodities. Others’ success can come only at the cost of my own failure.

After the story closes, Perrault adds his own “morals,” which explicitly reinforce the opening: “Without doubt it is a great advantage to have intelligence, courage, good breeding, and common sense. These, and similar talents come only from heaven, and it is good to have them.”9

Contrast this with “Nobody is born wise.”10

American Proverbs – Distilling the Mythology

American proverbs illuminate the contrast with Africa even more.

“God helps those who help themselves”

“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps”

“If you want something done right, do it yourself”

“You are the master of your own fate”

“March to the beat of your own drum”

The first example may be the most telling. “God helps those who help themselves” is often cited as scripture, but it does not appear in the Bible. Nonetheless, the language itself demonstrates that popular American culture has grafted individualism onto theology. It’s difficult to imagine a cultural sentiment farther away from the southern African collectivism of ubuntu – “I am because you are.”

Why This Cultural Contrast In Stories Matters

It’s hardly surprising that African stories, proverbs, mythos, and ideologies differ dramatically from American counterparts. But why does it matter, and what, if anything, should we do about it?

I’m not arguing that any of us need to stop consuming American culture and stories. Living here, that wouldn’t be possible, or it would deaden our existence. I’m certainly not giving up reading novels. And as for TV and movies – you can pry the remote out of my cold, dead hands. Despite my misgivings about the moral and mythological teachings from American stories, I love them.

For the same reasons, I am also not advocating for parents to try to “protect” their children from American stories. That’s silly.

But. I believe we might find an answer in the wisdom and counsel of Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé, a spiritual leader of the Dagara people in Burkina Faso, whose quote has helped inspire this project.11 According to Dr. Somé, “from an indigenous perspective, the individual psyche can be healed only by addressing one’s relationships with the visible worlds of nature and community and one’s relationships with the invisible forces of the ancestors and Spirit allies.”12 I am neither a psychologist nor a spiritual guru, but this resonates with me powerfully.

For me, that which connects us is healing. What divides us is toxic. American stories – as entertaining and enlightening as they often are – also help to divide us and reinforce racial hierarchy.

Dr. Somé says that “my goal is not to convert you to an indigenous point of view, but to offer and recommend that view as a potential enrichment to your present life.”13

And so I hope to enrich the lives of my grandchildren – plus my own life, and perhaps even yours – with African stories and proverbs. But stories alone may not be enough.

The Role of Ritual

Dr. Somé believes that ritual provides another critical aspect of enriching Western life with an indigenous point of view. “[I]t is in ritual that nature, community, and the Spirit World come together to support the inner building of identity.”14

The books I just bought for my grandkids bring to life Dr. Somé’s invocation of ritual. I’ll See You in Ijebu describes a whole series of beloved rituals shared by one family across separate religious traditions. In a fifth book, Imani’s Moon15 (not described above), the title character mimics the Maasai jumping dance ritual – adumu – so that she can touch the moon. I Am You: A Book About Ubuntu invokes ritual storytelling and dance: “When I listen as you tell me your stories, when I dance as I see you dance … I love you, and I love myself too.”

African Proverbs For All Ages reinforces the ritual signal:

“Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.”

“Where many are gathered, there is much to be said.”

I don’t have any of the details worked out. I’ll need the buy-in of my grandkids’ parents, and at least some of their Black family. We’ll need help from those who know and understand African rituals. But I believe this is the kind of work – especially when practiced in multi-racial groups – that could lead us to begin unmaking race. I owe it to my grandkids – and all of us – to give it a try. In coming months, I’ll let you know how it goes.