Dear White America: Oh, So Now You Get It?
By Lurie Daniel Favors, Esq.
Dear White America: now you get it. Or at least, now you’re starting to.
For years, Black folks have been warning about the direction this country was heading. We have been sounding alarms about authoritarianism, about weaponized law enforcement, about white nationalist vigilantism, about the erosion of democracy. We were told we were exaggerating. Being divisive. Being dramatic.
But suddenly, a lot of people seem to be waking up. And I have to admit: I’m in a bit of an “I told you so” mood.
The Warnings That Were Ignored
Do you remember when Vice President Kamala Harris warned that a second Donald Trump presidency could lead to the military being used against American citizens? At the time, a number of media outlets and commentators dismissed those warnings as political fearmongering. They said it wasn’t realistic. They said it was campaign rhetoric.
But the warning wasn’t theoretical. It was about power. Unchecked power, to be specific.
And today we are watching events unfold that look eerily similar to what many of us were warning about all along.
The Minneapolis Killing
In January, the country watched the aftermath of shootings in Minneapolis that should’ve shaken every American to their core. The first was the shooting of Renee Good and the second was the shooting of 37-year-old Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, Alex Peretti. ICE agents killed Pretti at a community protest. By all reports, he was observing the situation and documenting it with a camera. He also had a firearm on his hip, which he was legally permitted to carry.
Remember: we’ve been told for decades that the Second Amendment guarantees Americans the right to carry firearms in public. That principle was previously defended loudly by the same political movement that now seems strangely quiet.
Because according to eyewitness video and reports, Peretti attempted to intervene when he saw a woman being shoved and pepper-sprayed by ICE agents. He stepped between her and the officers. Moments later, he was swarmed by agents, beaten severely, disarmed, and then shot ten times.
Ten.
Where were the Second Amendment activists then? Where was the NRA? Where were the voices that spent years insisting that armed citizens were a necessary safeguard against government overreach? Because suddenly, the rules seemed to change.
A Double Standard Exposed
Now we are hearing federal officials suggest that showing up to a protest with a firearm is itself evidence of violent intent, even when the weapon is legally carried.
But that logic wasn’t applied when:
Armed protesters surrounded government buildings on Jan 6, 2021
Militias pointed rifles at federal agents in Nevada
Armed men patrolled state capitols during election protests
Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines with a rifle
In those moments, we were told guns represented “freedom.” Now they apparently represent terrorism. So the question becomes obvious: Who is allowed to exercise these rights and who isn’t?
ICE as a Militia
What makes the Minneapolis situation even more disturbing is what followed. Minnesota law enforcement officials reported that when they attempted to investigate the shooting, they were blocked by federal agents. Even after obtaining a judicial warrant granting them access to the scene, they were still denied entry. Then the FBI Director, defying all American history and logic, basically took a position that said the 2nd Amendment is not applicable to people who carry a firearm to a protest.
Let that sink in.
State investigators with a court order were prevented from examining a shooting scene within their own jurisdiction. Meanwhile, thousands of armed federal personnel had been deployed in the area, far outnumbering, and according to this local chief of police, harassing and abusing local law enforcement.
At that point, we have to ask a difficult question:
When it comes to ICE, are we looking at federal law enforcement, or something closer to a federally sanctioned militia? Because when armed agents operate without transparency, block investigations, and answer only to political leadership, that is no longer standard policing (which, frankly, was bad enough already). That is something else. Trump now has his own army. His own private militia. And your local police, even if they agree with you, are no match for them.
The Names You Don’t Know
The tragedy is that the national conversation has focused largely on two names: Alex Peretti and Renee Good. And yes, their deaths are tragic and deserve attention. But they are not the only victims.
According to reports circulating among civil rights advocates, ICE has shot multiple people this year, including Black, Latino, and immigrant victims whose names many Americans have never heard.
Parad Le
Herbert Sanchez Dominguez
Victor Manuel Diaz
Luis Beltran
Janes Cruz
Luis Gustavo Nunes Caceres
Heraldo Lunas Campos
Nine people have reportedly been shot this year alone.
And yet the public conversation exploded only when two of the victims were white. That should make us pause. Because as activist Hope Giselle recently put it: some people didn’t wake up because they understood the system. They woke up because the system finally looked like them.
The Electoral Connection
This moment isn’t happening in a vacuum. At the same time these events are unfolding, we are seeing increased pressure on states like Minnesota to turn over voter roll data to the federal government under the banner of “election integrity.”
If that sounds familiar, it should. We saw a version of this strategy in Florida when a newly created election police unit publicly arrested Black voters who had been told they were eligible to vote. Nearly all of those cases were later dropped.
The arrests weren’t about justice. They were about intimidation. And now similar mechanisms appear to be scaling nationally, just as midterm elections approach.
The Lesson Black America Has Been Teaching
Here is the painful truth: none of this is new.
Black communities have been warning about these dynamics for decades.
We warned when Trayvon Martin was killed. We warned when Michael Brown was killed. We warned when Breonna Taylor, Alton Sterling, and so many others lost their lives. We warned about vigilante violence and the merging of state power with extremist ideology. And every time, we were told we were overreacting. Until suddenly, more Americans, more white Americans, began experiencing the consequences themselves.
A Different Path Forward
So as we move forward, there are lessons here; not just for white America, but for Black America too. We been right and we been knew. No matter how much whiteness culture demands that we shrink ourselves for the sake of their comfort, we are no longer going to do so. Y’all can keep ignoring the warnings coming from Black communities until tragedy forces everyone else to listen. Sadly, by then, it’s already too late.
The Bottom Line
Yes, America is waking up. Yes, people are starting to see what Black people have been describing for years. But the real question is this: What will America do with that knowledge?
Because if the lesson of this moment is simply to acknowledge that Black people were right, without changing the structures that produced this crisis, then we will be right back here again.
And next time, the cost will be even higher. The truth is painful, but it’s simple: had America listened to Black people from the beginning, we might not be here today. And that is the tragedy we are all living with now.
FAFO and such.