Black Is Under Attack: Black Artists, It’s Time to Clock-In

We Can No Longer Afford to Sit This Out

“The war on Black Americans that is being waged by this President and this Republican Party is one of the only things that they’ve put their mind to in the past year that they’ve done pretty well at: a comprehensive attack on Black public officials and Black public power.” — Rachel Maddow

Voting rights under assault. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs dismantled with surgical precision. Civil rights enforcement weakened. Public sector jobs gutted in ways that have disproportionately harmed Black women. Fair housing protections under attack. Federal contracting protections rolled back. Black unemployment rising while the machinery of government pretends it is merely “streamlining.” The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has been tracking how Project 2025 proposals and Trump administration actions overlap, including attacks on equal employment opportunity, civil rights tools, federal anti-discrimination protections, and DEIA programs.

This is not politics as usual. This is architecture. This is blueprint. This is demolition with permits.

Nothing has threatened to set Black people back this swiftly and sweepingly in over one hundred years, not since Woodrow Wilson resegregated the federal workforce and used the power of the presidency to turn Black federal progress into a ghost story.

In late 2024 and early 2025, I completely understood the sentiment from many Black people that the fight going forward, particularly against Donald Trump and the Republican Party as they began to implement Project 2025, was not our fight. We were exhausted. We were dejected after Vice President Kamala Harris lost to a fraud and felon whose cruelty had already been displayed in surround sound.

We had marched. We had posted. We had organized. We had saved democracy more times than America had bothered to thank us for.

So when some Black folks said, “Let them have it,” I understood. Deeply.

But here is the hard, holy truth: they were never going to let us sit this one out.

Project 2025 was never some theoretical policy document collecting dust in a conservative think tank like a villain’s scrapbook. It was a 900-page warning label. And the audacity to write it down told me then what we are seeing now: they were serious. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights describes Project 2025 as an effort to empower the presidency, embed ideologues in the civil service, and unravel civil rights gains made over the last seven decades.

Even more chilling is the intellectual obsession behind some of it. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and a central figure associated with Project 2025, studied American slavery and Black family structures in his academic work. His scholarship examined enslaved families, kinship, and cultural identity. That does not mean scholarship automatically becomes sabotage. But in this moment, it is impossible not to notice the grotesque irony of a man trained to understand the architecture of Black survival helping lead a movement intent on dismantling the protections that made modern Black advancement possible.

So yes, I understood when we were tired. I understood when people said, “Black women have done enough.” I understood when folks wanted to protect their peace, their joy, their soft life, their little corner of the world that finally felt like safety.

But now it’s time to motivate, move, and mobilize.

And because I am an artist, and because I have studied the history of artists, entertainers, writers, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, and cultural workers in every major movement for progress, I know this much:

It has always been us. And it will be us again.

Black artists, Brown artists, it’s time to clock in.

Not because we are superhuman. Not because we owe America another rescue mission. Not because we should be expected to bleed beauty on demand. But because culture is where the imagination of a people gets organized. Politics moves policy. Culture moves people. And oppressive regimes know that. That is why they ban books, censor classrooms, defund the arts, attack drag performers, demonize Black history, police language, and turn “woke” into a weaponized slur. They are not afraid of art because it is decorative. They are afraid of art because it is infrastructure.

They know what we sometimes forget.

A song can become a marching order. A film can become a mirror. A joke can puncture propaganda. A poem can outlive a president. A painting can make denial impossible. A performance can turn fear into fellowship.

Ask Nina Simone.

After the assassination of Medgar Evers and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four little Black girls, Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddam.” It was not polite. It was not calibrated for bipartisan comfort. It was rage with perfect pitch. PBS’s American Masters notes that Simone used the song to pull from the past, speak to the present, and warn about what was yet to come. The song became a civil rights anthem precisely because it refused the narcotic of respectability. It made America hear what it wanted to ignore.

Ask Harry Belafonte.

Belafonte did not just lend his voice. He lent his money, his house, his network, his fame, his strategy, and his body. The National Museum of African American History and Culture notes that he used his voice and wallet to finance social justice, while the National Park Service records that he organized demonstrations, raised money, and contributed personal funds to keep movement activities going. Belafonte understood that celebrity is not power unless it is converted into leverage. Otherwise, it is just applause wearing cologne.

Ask Sidney Poitier.

Poitier’s strategy was different but no less significant. He carried himself onscreen with an almost architectural dignity at a time when Hollywood wanted Black men contained, comic, criminal, or invisible. His presence challenged the visual grammar of white supremacy. He was not on every picket line in the same way Belafonte was, but his image did political work. That is a crucial lesson for artists: there is not one way to serve the movement. Some of us raise money. Some of us write. Some of us disrupt rooms. Some of us reshape representation so thoroughly that the culture has to make room for a new reality.

Ask the artists of the Black Arts Movement.

From 1965 to 1975, the Black Arts Movement operated as the cultural wing of Black Power, joining music, literature, drama, and visual art to ideas of self-determination, political consciousness, and African American cultural pride. It built institutions, workshops, journals, theaters, and language. It gave Black people not only protest but vocabulary. And vocabulary matters. Oppression thrives when people cannot name what is happening to them. Art gives the thing a name, then gives the people a rhythm to fight it.

Ask the anti-apartheid movement.

Artists helped turn South Africa’s apartheid regime into a global moral emergency. The cultural boycott was designed to stop international artists from performing in apartheid South Africa and to isolate the regime culturally. Musicians, writers, and performers were central to publicizing anti-apartheid campaigns and winning mass support, particularly in Britain, where concerts and cultural campaigns helped raise funds and pressure. Culture did not end apartheid alone. No serious person would claim that. But culture helped make neutrality socially and morally untenable. That is one of art’s greatest powers: it can make silence embarrassing.

Ask Taraji P. Henson.

At the 2024 BET Awards, she warned people about Project 2025 and urged viewers to educate themselves and vote. Afterward, “Project 2025” began trending on Google, according to local news coverage. That is what a platform can do when it is used with precision. One person, one microphone, one major cultural stage, and suddenly a policy threat that had been hiding in plain sight got dragged into the group chat.

Now, let’s be clear. I am not suggesting every Black or Brown artist has to become a full-time political operative. I am not suggesting Beyoncé has to run a PAC between world tours or Rihanna has to turn Fenty into the Department of Resistance, though I would absolutely buy the lip gloss and give it to my nieces. I am saying that in abnormal times, normal behavior becomes complicity faster than we want to admit.

The Met Gala can wait. The brunch can wait. The algorithm can wait. Our people cannot.

Self-preservation is human. Comfort is seductive. Affluence is anesthetic. And too many of us have worked so hard to get inside certain rooms that we now mistake proximity to power for protection from power.

But the lesson of history is brutally clear: no amount of money, fame, polish, or assimilation will save us from a system determined to make Black and Brown progress reversible. The machine may flatter you before it flattens you, but flattened is flattened.

So what do we do?

Here are five things Black and Brown artists can do now, rooted in history, strategy, and proven effectiveness.

1. Use the platform to educate, not just perform.

The first responsibility of artists in a repressive moment is to make the invisible visible. Authoritarian and discriminatory systems depend on confusion. They flood the zone. They rename cruelty as efficiency. They turn civil rights into “special treatment.” They call censorship “parental rights.” They call historical erasure “patriotic education.”

Artists can cut through that fog.

Today, that means using captions, concerts, comedy sets, podcasts, films, scripts, Substacks, reels, and interviews to explain what is happening in plain language. Not everyone is going to read a policy brief. But they may listen to a song. Watch a monologue. Share a clip. Sit through a film. Laugh at a joke that sneaks the truth past their defenses.

Make the issue legible. Translate policy into human consequence. Turn abstraction into story.

That works because people do not organize around what they cannot understand. The artist’s job is not merely to express pain. It is to make the stakes undeniable.

2. Build cultural coalitions, not isolated statements.

A single statement can matter. A coalition can move weather.

Black and Brown artists today need coalitions across film, television, music, theater, literature, comedy, dance, visual art, fashion, digital media, and sports-adjacent culture. We need shared calendars, shared messaging, shared rapid response, shared fundraising, shared amplification. We need the famous, the almost famous, the locally famous, and the “famous to the right 4,000 people” artists working together.

That means partnering with civil rights organizations, voter protection groups, legal defense funds, labor groups, HBCUs, grassroots organizers, and local community institutions. The artist brings attention. The organizer brings strategy. The lawyer brings protection. The community brings legitimacy. Together, that becomes power.

3. Make resistance emotionally sustainable.

Oppressive regimes want people exhausted, isolated, paranoid, ashamed, and numb. Art fights that by creating emotional stamina. Spirituals did this during slavery. Freedom songs did this during the Civil Rights Movement. South African resistance music did this during apartheid. Nueva canción did this across Latin America, where folk music became a vehicle for political resistance against dictatorships and social injustice. Smithsonian Folkways notes that nueva canción emerged as a proactive movement contesting political dictatorships of the time.

That history matters because joy is not a distraction from resistance. Joy is fuel. Beauty is fuel. Humor is fuel. Dance is fuel. Church is fuel. Ballroom is fuel. A cookout can be fuel. A poem can be fuel. A meme can be fuel. A really good petty caption can be fuel, too, beloved.

Artists can create spaces where people feel less alone and more able to keep going. Concerts for civic engagement. Short films followed by community conversations. Comedy shows that fund bail funds or voter protection work. Digital series that explain threats without traumatizing the audience into paralysis. Plays, readings, and performances that make grief communal and courage contagious.

The effectiveness of this is not sentimental. It is strategic. People who feel connected are harder to intimidate. People who can imagine a future are harder to control.

4. Practice strategic refusal.

Sometimes the most powerful thing an artist can do is say no.

No to the performance. No to the photo op. No to the gala. No to laundering the reputation of people and institutions actively harming our communities. No to appearing at the celebration while the house is on fire. No to letting our beauty, talent, rhythm, humor, and cultural brilliance be used as mood lighting for oppression.

The cultural boycott against apartheid South Africa worked because it made participation costly. It forced artists and audiences to ask: whose legitimacy am I helping manufacture? What regime am I normalizing by showing up? What violence am I making glamorous?

This is where our biggest stars matter. Beyoncé and Rihanna did not have to attend the Met Gala this year. Their absence would have made the kind of statement that rippled around the world. And this is not about singling them out for punishment. It is about naming the truth: when you have extraordinary leverage, ordinary silence is louder.

Strategic refusal is not random cancellation. It is targeted, disciplined, and public. Artists can refuse events funded by companies attacking DEI. Refuse partnerships with institutions rolling back civil rights commitments. Refuse to perform in states or spaces actively harming Black, Brown, immigrant, queer, and trans communities unless the performance is tied to direct organizing or community benefit.

Refusal works when it creates consequence. It says: you do not get our culture while attacking our people.

5. Fund the fight and tell people where to go.

The movement needs beauty. It also needs money.

Artists can host benefit performances, donate a percentage of sales, create limited-edition works for movement organizations, direct followers to vetted funds, underwrite local organizers, sponsor voter registration drives, fund documentary crews, pay designers and editors for civic education campaigns, and make resistance look as resourced as the opposition’s propaganda.

Political science research on civil resistance has found that nonviolent campaigns between 1900 and 2006 were twice as successful as violent campaigns. That does not mean hashtags alone save us. It means organized, disciplined, mass participation matters. Artists are uniquely positioned to help bring people into that participation, then direct them toward action that already exists.

Do not just say “vote.” Say where. Say when. Say how. Say what is at stake. Say who is organizing. Say where to donate. Say where to volunteer. Say what meeting to attend. Say which local race matters. Say which school board is banning the books. Say which sheriff is cooperating with cruelty. Say which judge is on the ballot.

In oppressive times, vague inspiration is not enough. We need wayfinding.

And let me say this plainly: inaction has consequences.

If we do nothing, we will not simply return to some neutral baseline. We will watch protections vanish. We will watch Black women pushed out of economic security. We will watch Black history criminalized in classrooms. We will watch civil rights enforcement hollowed out until the law remains on paper but disappears in practice. We will watch immigrants terrorized, queer and trans communities targeted, poor people punished, and Black and Brown communities told once again to wait, behave, endure, and be grateful.

We have seen this country do that before.

Black and Brown artists, we are not here merely to entertain the empire while it sharpens the knife. We are not here to decorate decline. We are not here to be invited, photographed, praised, and politically neutered.

We are here to tell the truth beautifully enough that people can bear to hear it.

We are here to make courage contagious.

We are here to turn memory into strategy.

We are here to remind our people that they are not powerless, not voiceless, not alone, and not crazy for recognizing the danger.

Clock in.