Our divisions have created the potential for redemptive revolution

[marmar]

Our divisions have created the potential for redemptive revolution
The white consensus is shattering. New coalitions for racial justice could follow

By Joel Edward Goza
Published June 24, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) In a time when Donald Trump risks moving our country closer to war, the lessons from the "No Kings" rallies become more urgent. Along with thousands of others, I marched in Louisville, Ky., the city where Black protesters demanding justice for Breonna Taylor helped ignite a fire that led to the racial reckoning of 2020. I couldn’t help but think of those marches as I walked through the city a couple of weeks ago, and I marveled at how I have never witnessed anything quite like what I was now seeing: Downtown Louisville filled with white people seeking a redemptive revolution. And it was beautiful.

When it comes to the work of social change, there is power in division — particularly when it is white people who are divided. This month marks my 20th anniversary investing in the work of racial justice. During my first 10 years, I focused on frontline activism with issues ranging from education to health, housing, immigration reform and faith-based organizing. My second decade was largely spent researching and writing about the history and evolution of American ideas on race, religion and politics. Due to my time living and working in economically impoverished Black and brown communities, my perspective is often quite different from those of either my liberal or conservative white friends.

From politics to religion, I have often found that white liberal and conservative assumptions and convictions are more in keeping with each other than the Black and immigrant communities that took me under their wings, a phenomenon I refer to as white consensus. But what I saw in Louisville at No Kings testified to the fact that the white consensus that has held our nation in bondage is shattering — and every time white consensus shatters, it opens the door for revolutionary changes.

.....(snip)....

When Trump announced his third run for president, I feared he might seek to create in a second term the white unity he had failed to generate in his first. In times past, the moral exhaustion and spiritual superficialness of white moderates and progressives led to waving the white flag of surrender and accepting white unity on toxic terms. And after Trump took office in January, businesses and billionaires bowed. The media mourned the absence of the resistance, leading many to believe the days of a committed anti-Trump movement were over. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/24/our-divisions-have-created-the-potential-for-redemptive-revolution/

[creon]

1. good article

IT is worth reading. He made some good points